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BIZZELL - DUNCAN 




Book. 
GopyrightN?. 

COKraCHT DEPOSm 



r 



Present Day 
Tendencies of Education 






WrB. BIZZELL 

President of the Agricultural and Mechanical 
College of Texas 

and 

M. H. DUNCAN 

Superintendent of Schools 
Amarillo, Texas 



RAND McNALLY & COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 



Copyright, igiS, by 
Rand McNally & Company 



'/3 







NOV 29 1918 



©aA508339 



^-^'i 




THE CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Preface vii 

chapter"! 

I. Education for Democracy . . ... . 1 

X Schools Not Yet Democratic ...... 2 

Based on Outgrown Theories 5 

No Provision for Individual Differences ... 7 

Needs of the Children Not Recognized ... 13 

Training for Service 16 

II. Learning and Doing 20 

The Mind and the Hand 21 

Relation of Physical and Mental Training . 23 

Thought and Action 24 

Clinging to Past Ideals 26 

Thought and Action Not Divorced in Primitive 

Education 28 

Education Based on Words Leads to Conserv- 
atism 29 

Work as a Factor in Education 31 

Educational Philosophy of Jesus 33 

III. Self-Activity in Education 37 

This Basic Law Not Observed 38 

Stages in Educational Progress 42 

No Education without Self -Activity .... 48 

IV. Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 51 

Origin of Play 52 

Many Modern Activities Drudgery .... 56 

Play Builds Up 59 

Educational Conservatism 64 

V. Froebel's Conception of Unity 68 

Apperceptive Basis in the Pupil 70 

Childhood, Youth, and Manhood .... 72 

Physical, Mental, and Moral 74 

Feeling, Knowing, and Willing 76 

Receptive, Reflective, and Executive Faculties . 77 

VI. The Central Nervous System and What It 

Means in Education 81 

ill 



iv The Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Our Thoughts and Deeds Make Us What We Are 84 

Importance of Early Education 85 

Environment in Education 90 

Education Should Be Natural 93 

Bad Habits Overcome by Persistency ... 94 

*^ VII. Vocational Education ........ 96 

Aims in Education , . 97 

Vocational Direction 98 

jA Some Results of False Educational Ideals . . 101 

Put First Things First 104 

Education and Economic Progress .... 106 
Lack of Vocational Skill Cause of Poverty and 

Crime 108 

VIII. AVOCATIONAL EDUCATION 112 

The Justification for Avocational Education . 113 

The Opportunities of the Leisure Class . . 115 

The Physiological Basis of Social Activity . . 117 

The Sociological Basis of Avocational Activities 121 

The Need for Avocational Education . . 124 
The Place of Avocational Education in Our 

School System 126 

IX. Natural Aptitudes and Their Conscious Di- 
rection 131 

Classification of Native Endowments ... 139 

The Vocational Guidance of Youth .... 142 

Conclusion 146 

X. Education and Pragmatism 149 

Americanism and Pragmatism 153 

Influence on Education 155 

Conclusion 159 

XI. Freedom and Law 162 

Training for Freedom 164 

Source of Law 165 

True Law in Harmony with Child Nature . . 167 

Obedience to Law Basis for Freedom . . . 169 



i/ 



The Contents v 

CHAPTER PAGE 

School Should Inculcate Habit of Obedience . 172 
School Should Be Adapted to the Nature of the 

Child 173 

When the Law is Violated 176 

XII. The Heart of the Teacher 181- 

The Successful Teacher 183 • 

XIII. Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer 195"^ 

The Lecture Method 196 

The Pupil an Active Inquirer . . 197 

Fundamental Elements 200 

Too Much Imitation 207 

XIV. Proper Habits of Work 210"^ 

Habit of Investigation 210 

Effort 212 

Judgment 213 

Organization of Ideas 215 

The Application of Knowledge 220 

XV. Educational Measurements 224 

Self-Comparison 227 

Comparison with Others 227 

Old-Time Examination Unreliable .... 229 

Standard Tests 231 

Relative Emphasis to be Placed on Subjects 232 

The Relative Worth of Subjects 233 

XVI. The Larger Service of the High School . 236 
Trend of High-School Reorganization . . 237 
Home Credit for High-School Work .... 240 
The Scope and Limitation of High-School Exten- 
sion 244 

Conclusion 246 

XVII. The Educational Survey — Its Purposes and 

Possibilities 248 

The Genesis of the Survey Movement . 249 

The Parts of the Educational Survey . . . 250 

Types of Educational Surveys 252 

The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Sur- 
vey Methods 254 



THE PREFACE 

ONE of the most marked characteristics of this age 
is the gradual transformation that is taking place 
in our educational system. Not only are we gradually 
adapting the educational process to social demands, but 
we are, at the same time, adapting it to the needs of the 
child. The school of to-day is far in advance of what it 
was ten years ago, and the indications are that the next 
decade will see even greater progress in every phase of 
education. School men are studying educational prob- 
lems more earnestly than ever before, and this study is 
already bringing a rich fruitage in a better understanding 
of child nature and of the means to be used in bringing 
about the complete and harmonious development of the 
child. To be sure, the conservatism of the school man 
and of others in charge of otu* educational system who 
have been educated under the old regime will, to a cer- 
tain extent, impede educational progress and delay the 
practical application of the advance that has been made 
in educational theory; but, thanks to the progressiveness 
of the age and the reasonableness of the new educational 
principles, this conservatism is becoming less and less a 
factor to alarm us. 

The greatest danger we see ahead is that both the 
school man and the school-board member will get the 
form without the spirit of the new education. In many 
cases it is evident that the new educational principles 
appeal to school officials and others chiefly because of 
their practical tendencies (and here we use the term 
practical in its narrow, material sense) . This has aroused 
bitter opposition on the part of those who believe in the 

vii 



viti The Preface 

old cultural phase of education and has caused them to 
cling to the old-time formal study with a greater tenacity 
than they otherwise would have done. To be specific, 
manual training and domestic science have been given a 
place in many schools because of their vocational value, 
and their cultural value has been lost sight of. As a 
matter of fact, the vocational value of these studies 
should not cause us to minimize their cultural value. 
For, by placing chief emphasis on the cultural phase of 
the practical study, we harmonize the practical and the 
cultural conception of education, and, by pacifying the 
extreme cultiirist, reduce to a minimimi the time devoted 
to the purely cultural study. There should be no war 
between the two conceptions of education; for, if they 
are viewed in their proper light, there is no hostility 
between them. What is practical is culturaf and what 
is cultural in the true sense of the term is also practical. 
The cultured man is not necessarily the man who 
has studied Sophocles, Eviripides, and Horace; who is 
acquainted with graphs, convergent series, and Newton's 
laws, and is conversant with the lore of past ages; in 
fact, such a man may not be at all cultured in the proper 
sense of the term. The cultured man is the efficient 
man — the man who is acquainted with his physical, 
spiritual, and social environment and is able to influence 
conditions around him for the better. To get this con- 
ception of the educated man, we must follow not merely 
the letter but the spirit of the new education. 

Another great impediment to educational progress is 
our inability to break loose from the past in educational 
practice. The school man has been a slave to conven- 
tional pedagogy, and it is next to impossible for him to 
break away from the stereotyped manner of doing things. 
While he is, in many cases, in favor of progressive idea 



The Preface ix 

in education, he wants to absorb those ideas into the 
educational system as it is now organized. He wants to 
put the new wine into old bottles, when it is no more 
possible to put the new wine of progress into the old 
bottles of educational formalism than it was possible to 
put the living spirit of Christianity into the dead formal- 
ism of Judaism. The school as it is now organized is 
not adapted to the spirit of the new education. Its 
present organization is due to former conceptions of edu- 
cation, and when we change the spirit of education we 
must adapt the school organization to the new spirit. 
These new ideas cannot be tacked on to the old system, 
but they must permeate it through and through and 
cause its complete rejuvenation. Failure to grasp this 
important point has perhaps done more to impede edu- 
cational progress than any other one thing. 

In pointing out what seems to us the weaknesses of 
the present educational system, we do so, not in a spirit 
of pessimism, for we believe that the outlook was never 
more encouraging than at present; but we do so to 
indicate the lines along which effort must be made if 
we would enter into the spirit of the new education. 
In fact, the defects of our educational system are so 
glaring that they are to us a source of great hope for a 
speedy reform. 

Many of the ideas expressed herein are familiar to 
students of educational thought of the times, but the 
extent to which these views have been accepted and 
applied varies widely. It is the belief of the authors 
that the various discussions contained in this book repre- 
sent very definite and positive tendencies in education at 
the present time. Our object will be accomplished if this 
volume serves to make a little more accessible these 
modern views to the teachers in the ranks. It has been 



X The Preface 

our aim to emphasize those things that are necessary to 

bring us into the spirit of the new education and to make 

the child, instead of the book, the center of gravity in 

the school. 

W. B. B. 

M. H. D. 
June I, igi8 



PRESENT DAY TENDENCIES 
IN EDUCATION 



CHAPTER I 
EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 

THE purpose in the minds of the founders of public 
education was to make education accessible to all 
children. Horace Mann once said, "We will make a 
system of education which will make it possible for every 
child, rich or poor, to go to college." While Mr. Mann's 
conception of public education was different from that 
which progressive educators hold to-day, his idea was to 
educate every child. It is only on such a basis that he 
could have appealed to the people and have induced 
them to pay their taxes to support the schools. If the 
people had thought that the schools were to be run for 
the benefit of the chosen few, they wotdd have let the 
chosen few pay the taxes. 

The conception of public education held by its founders 
has now become general, and in every part of the country 
there are schools of all grades for all who will take advan- 
tage of them. The public is maintaining a system of 
public education which extends from the kindergarten, 
through the primary, elementary, and secondary schools, 
the college, and the university. The country is paying 
each year for these schools more than one billion dollars, 
and there are enrolled in them more than twenty million 
children. 



2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

SCHOOLS NOT YET DEMOCRATIC 

Thus it would seem that public education has satisfied 
even the fondest dreams of its founders and that nothing 
more could be desired. However, a closer examination 
will show that these results are more apparent than real. 
In the first place, there is a great mass of the children of 
the country for whom the schools in general make no 
provision. The average public school makes no pro- 
vision for the blind, the deaf mute, the feeble-minded, 
the subnormal, the delinquent, the anaemic, or the 
foreign. The program of the school has been laid out 
with a view to preparing the "average child" for college, 
but we are just beginning to see that this "average child" 
must be far above the average to do the work that is 
required of him. The founders of the public schools with 
their classical conception of education never thought of 
making provision for the child who was not strong enough 
to take the college-preparatory course. They were 
dominated by the social philosophy of the time, which 
held that "all men are created equal" and that it was 
within the power of every child of any significance to 
society to take the classical course; the summum bonum 
of all was to graduate from a classical college. 

The founders of the public schools, too, had a false 
conception of the mental processes. They believed that 
the mind of the child in the beginning was like an empty 
bucket and that the end of education was to fill it. The 
question of varying capacity did not interest them, for 
they believed that all minds could with sufficient effort 
master the classical curriculum of the time. Even now 
it is a common saying among us, come down from the 
days of the American Revolution, that there is no limit 
to human capacity and that a man can do what he 
wants to do. If one man has mastered Latin, Greek, 



Education for Democracy y^ j 

and higher mathematics, another can. He may have 
to put forth a greater effort, but he cafi master them 
nevertheless. 

We still believe that human capacities are limitless, 
but we have a somewhat different conception of what 
we mean by capacity. A man never absolutely reaches 
the limit of his growth along any line; but he reaches 
the point of diminishing returns along some lines sooner 
than along others, and finds it more profitable to turn 
his attention to other lines. The point of diminishing * 
returns for most people in those old-time studies, such as / 
Latin, Greek, analytics, and calculus, comes very early, | 
and it will pay them to turn their attention to those 
subjects in which a greater exploitation is possible. 

The failure to see that the varying capacities of chil- 
dren would render it impossible for many of them to be 
benefited by the old classical course caused the founders 
of public education to lose sight of the masses of the 
children. The great masses of the children of the 
country have received but little benefit from the public 
schools because the course of study has not been adapted 
to their needs and capacities. 

Dr. Leonard P. Ayres of the Russell Sage Foundation 7\ 
says that only 12 per cent of the children who enter the 
public schools remain until they are sixteen years of age 
and that most of them leave during the next two years. 
In the report of the United States Bureau of Education 
for 19 10 we find that the enrollment in the high schools 
of the country for that year was 915,061. The number 
of graduates from the high schools for the year was 
111,363, and the number who were prepared to enter 
college was 37,811. In 1910 there were approximately 
eighteen million children enrolled in the public schools 
of the country. Thus we see that only 5 per cent of all 



4 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

the children in the public schools were in the high schools, 
a little more than one-half of i per cent graduated from 
the high schools, and one-fifth of i per cent attended 
college. Only one-fifth of i per cent reached the desired 
goal. The others fell by the wayside. 

If all the children were to stay in school, there would 
be at least 1,250,000 in each one of the grades, and there 
would be that many graduates each year. But how many 
are there as it is? There are 915,061 in the four grades 
of the high school, when there should be 5,000,000. 
There are 111,363 graduates, when there should be 1,250,- 
000. Thus the graduating class is only 8 per cent as 
large as it should be. The question at once arises in the 
mind of every friend of public education: Where are 
yjhe other 92 per cent? 

An examination of the records of the schools in our 
own state will show that more than 50 per cent of the 
children enrolled in the elementary grades are from one 
to seven years behind where they should be, and con- 
ditions in the high schools are even worse. Under such 
conditions, can we expect the children to remain in school, 
and are we surprised that such a large percentage of 
them never reach the high school and that of those who 
do reach the high school 41 per cent are in the first year, 
27 per cent in the second year, 19 per cent in the third 
year, and only 13 per cent in the fourth year? The 
statistics referred to above show that only about 12 per 
cent of those who enter the high school complete the 
course; and when we consider that less than 25 per cent 
of all the children ever reach the high school, and that only 
12 per cent of that number take full advantage of the 
work that is offered them, we can see how far our schools 
are from reaching the standards of democracy. 

In the United States there are more than twenty 



Education for Democracy 5 

million people attending school. Going to school is the 
business of about one-fifth of our total population. As 
stated before, the government is spending more than one 
billion dollars annually to furnish facilities for the school- 
ing of this part of its population. It is doing this that 
they may be better prepared to perform the duties that 
will be placed upon them. The questions that we should 
honestly ask ourselves are: Is this money being spent 
to the best advantage? Could our schools be organized 
in such a manner as to bring a greater return on this vast 
expenditure? Many of our leading business men and 
educational thinkers are of the opinion that our schools 
are "slipshod, chaotic, mechanical," good in a few places, 
but for the most part not what they should be, and fail- 
ing to give these twenty million people the training they 
need. It is certainly not a hopeful comment on the 
schools of the land that more than two-thirds of our boys 
and girls are forced to leave school before the age of 
fourteen years because the school program does not give 
them the necessary preparation for their places in the 
commercial, industrial, homemaking, agricultural, and 
political world where they belong. 

BASED ON OUTGROWN THEORIES 

No less renowned an educator than Dr. Paul H. Hanus 
of Harvard University says that "during the school 
period aversion and evasion are more frequently culti- 
vated than power and skill," and that, worst of all, the 
boys and girls acquire during this period the "habit of 
being satisfied with inadequate or partial achievement." 
How could we expect results to be otherwise when we 
confine these boys and girls to such unattractive and, 
for the most part, for them absolutely useless subjects 
as technical grammar, ancient history, Latin syntax, 




6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

theoretical geometry, book science, and a dry surve^^ 
English literature? We say these subjects are good for 
the mental discipline they give and we satisfy our con- 
sciences with such an answer; but we must remember 
that the whole doctrine of mental discipline is questioned 
by some of the greatest educational thinkers of the 
times. We cannot afford to base so important a thing 
as the education of the children on a theory that is not 
definitely established, or, at least, on one that is questioned 
by so many of our educational thinkers. It may be said 
that the doctrine of mental discipline has never been 
disproved. In reply to that it can be said that it has 
never been proved, and it is incumbent upon those who 
would base our educational system on such a theory to 
prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. They should not 
ask us to believe a thing just because our fathers before 
us believed it and it is customary to do so. Then, even 
granting that there is such a thing as general discipline, 
none would assert that it could be brought about unless 
there is close application to the study at hand, which is 
seldom the case with the subjects referred to above. 

When we investigate what the boys and girls in the 
high schools are studying, what do we find? From the 
report of the United States Commissioner of Education 
we find that 83 per cent of them are studying Latin, 
French, and German, when less than 5 per cent of those 
who are studying these languages will ever have occasion 
to use them. We find tha;t 88 per cent of them are 
studying algebra and theoretical geometry for the mental 
discipline they give, when no one knows whether there is 
such a thing or not. We find that less than 5 per cent 
of them are studying agriculture, a study of vital impor- 
tance to our national well-being; and that less than 4 
per cent are studying home economics, a subject upon 



Education for Democracy 7 

which the strength and hardihood and, in a very large 
measure, the happiness of our race depend. It seems 
"that our schools are organized and conducted so that the 
boys and girls will think more of the ornamental studies 
and choose them in preference to those that are more 
essential to their well-being. They are thinking more of 
** dressing their minds in the prevailing fashion" than 
they are of satisfying their physical, mental, moral, and 
industrial needs. 

Let it be understood that we are not making war on 
a classical education. It is doubtless a good thing for 
those who can take it; but any sane man can see clearly 
that it is not the thing for all the children and that it 
is not the thing for most of the children. However good 
a classical education may be in itself, experience has 
proved to us that the children are not going to take it. 
It is the grossest stupidity on our part to go on year 
after year spending our money to give the children that 
which they will not and cannot take. The book-minded 
child may profit by such an education; but the motor- 
minded child will receive no benefit from it, even though 
his parents and teachers succeed in cramming it down him. 

NO PROVISION FOR INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

The classical course is not a bad thing in itself; but 
it is not broad enough for a foundation for public educa- 
tion. It makes no provision for individual differences. 
The educational philosophy of the eighteenth century 
said that "all men are created equal and endowed by 
their Creator with certain inalienable rights," one of 
which is to get a classical education, and it made no 
provision for inequalities. However, in spite of such a 
philosophy and with all respect to Thomas Jefferson and 
his fellow philosophers, it does not take a very wise man 

2 



8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

to see that all men are not created equal in this respect. 
One is created with a capacity for figures; another lacks 
such capacity. One is good in language ; another cannot 
with the greatest effort master the subject. There are 
people who are geniuses along certain lines and imbeciles 
along others. We have all known of bright pupils in 
school who could not learn the multiplication tables. We 
have known of others who could not learn to spell, or to 
write, others who could not remember dates, or memorize. 
We have known a number of pupils who could not with 
the utmost endeavor learn Latin. We have known others 
who could not learn the simplest truths about mathematics. 
It is said that Charles Sumner, who was one of the great- 
est men America ever produced, could not learn mathe- 
matics. The great Agassiz was also a blockhead when it 
came to figures. Grant was a simpleton when it came to 
financial matters, and many others could be named. We 
must not think that just because a man is great, he is 
great along all lines. He may be extremely weak along 
certain lines, and in the case of the great majority of 
men this is true. We know their strong points, but never 
hear of their weak points, and to a large extent a man's 
success or failure depends upon whether his weak or 
strong points get before the public. Grant was regarded 
by all his neighbors as a very ordinary fellow until he found 
his life opportvmity in the management of armies. Patrick 
Henry was regarded as a worthless dreamer until he was 
called upon to make a speech. Blind Tom, James Sidis, 
even Webster, and many other geniuses we know or have 
read about were geniuses on just one side; on the other 
they were very ordinary creatures. When we consider the 
people we meet every day, we find the same differences. 
Some have strong points along certain lines; others have 
their strong points along other lines. As the Scriptures 



Education for Democracy g 

say, "There are diversities of gifts." "Are all apostles? 
are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of 
miracles? Have all gifts of healing? do all speak with 
tongues? do all interpret?" The answer is, Most siirely 
they do not ; but each has his gift according to the talents 
with which heaven has endowed him. 

Every teacher knows that some of her pupils are good 
in drawing, others in arithmetic, others in language, and 
others in geography. It is the exceptional pupil who 
is good in all his studies, and we should not expect a 
pupil to be good in all. However, as a matter of fact, 
our college-entrance conception of education leads us to 
endeavor to make them all advance alike. We tie them 
together in the first grade and we endeavor to make them 
walk in lock step until they graduate. They must all 
study the same subjects, make the same grades, and do 
their work as nearly alike as possible. We want to 
educate them symmetrically and make them all-around 
beings. Oh, the sins that have been committed in the 
name of this word symmetry! We have been afraid 
that we shall produce one-sided creatures, and we have 
sought to make each child good in every subject taught 
in the schools. When a pupil is weak along a certain 
line, we tell him to let his strong points alone for a while 
and devote his attention to his weak points. The girl 
tells us that she cannot learn algebra, and we tell her 
that is all the better reason for her studying it. She 
must strengthen her weak points and be a symmetrical 
character ! 

Somewhere we heard a story of a man who thought 
that he could improve upon animal kind by developing 
in them gifts which they did not possess. As the story 
goes, he called the animals around him, and said to the 
lion that he must cease roaring and learn to moo like 



10 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the cow, and to the cow that she must cease mooing and 
learn to roar Hke the lion. The cat must learn to bark 
like the dog and the dog must learn to mew like the cat. 
The snake was good enough at crawling and must learn 
to fly like the bird, and the bird was good enough at flying 
and must learn to crawl like the snake. The rooster must 
learn to cackle and the hen must learn to crow; the duck 
must learn to gobble and the turkey must learn to quack. 
Each one was to neglect the things he could do well and 
the gifts that heaven had endowed him with, and endearvo 
to learn those other things that were foreign to his nature. 
We can see the absurdity of this story, but we are 
blind to the equal absurdity of endeavoring to do with 
children what this man was trying to do with these 
animals. How many times have we told our pupils that 
their not being good in a subject is all the better reason 
for their devoting more time to that subject? Here is a 
boy who has no talent for language and cannot learn the 
subject; but he is good in physics. Do we let him devote 
his time to that subject in which it will count most, or 
do we tell him to devote most of his time to that subject 
in which he is weakest? We hold him fast to our formal 
course of study. If he fails in grammar, he is retained in 
the grade until he passes the subject or passes out of 
school, and experience has proved that most frequently 
he passes out of school. We are more willing that a 
hundred such little ones should perish than that one 
jot or tittle of our requirements should not be met. It 
is true that we are beginning to difterentiate our course 
of study for the high school to some degree at least, and 
the pupil may, in a measure, adapt the work to his apti- 
tudes and needs; but the wall that separates the high 
school from the grades is so high and the watchmen are 
so diligent that few there be that go over it. We allow 



Education for Democracy ii 

the pupils to go from the fifth grade to the sixth, or from 
the sixth to the seventh, without so much restriction; 
but when they knock at the door of the high school from 
the seventh grade, they must have the proper password 
and sign, or there will be no admission. 

Mr. Smith in his book on All the Children of All the 
People has a chapter on ''Sympathetic Vibrations" which 
illustrates this point as well as anything we have ever 
read. Those who have studied physics, and many who 
have not, know what is meant by "sympathetic vibra- 
tion." If we put a tuning fork firmly on its foot on one 
end of a table and another of the same pitch on the other 
end, and cause the first to vibrate briskly, in a few seconds 
the second will begin to vibrate in sympathy, and even 
though we may stop the first, the other will continue to 
vibrate for several seconds. However, if the first fork 
is an A, and the other a B, we may pound on the A as much 
as we please and the other will be as mute as death. Its 
lack of vibration is not due to its not being a good fork. 
It is just as good as any fork, and all it needs is to have 
the fork on the other end of the table tuned to the same 
pitch. 

If we place on one end of the table a row of forks of 
all pitches except an A, and set an A to vibrating on the 
other end, we shall get no response. We may pound on 
the A as much as we please, but there will be no re- 
sponse. But when we cease trying to get a response by 
hammering on the A, set up a C, and give it a gentle tap, 
the C on the other end of the table will begin to "hum" 
most beautifully. There is no trouble in getting a 
response when both forks are keyed to the same pitch; 
but, otherwise, we may pound until we knock the fork 
out of place or batter it to pieces and not get a movement 
from the other end of the table. We may try to make 



12 Present Day Tendencies in Edttcation 

ourselves think, as Mr. Smith says, that we get a response; 
we may manipulate in such a way as to make others 
think that there is a response; but we may be perfectly 
sure that, if the two forks are not keyed to the same 
pitch, one will not vibrate with the other. This is an 
excellent experiment — one that would teach many parents 
and some teachers we know a valuable lesson if they would 
try it. 

Now most boys and girls are like that row of tuning 
forks. They have one or more tones missing. In one 
it is an A, in another a B, in another C, and in still another 
a B and a C. It is the exceptional boy or girl who has 
all the tones and is able to respond to all the different 
vibrations. However, we are conducting our schools as 
though all the boys and girls were complete with every 
tone present. The grammar tone, the arithmetic tone, 
the Latin tone, the ancient history tone, and the algebra 
tone are all supposed to be in their places. The teacher 
gets off across the room, strikes the algebra fork, and 
expects to get a response from all the pupils. If she 
does not, she feels that there is something wrong with 
those pupils who do not respond, and she is right about 
it. The algebra fork in those particular pupils is missing. 
However, the pupils are not to blame for this. God made 
them that way, and the clay has no right to say to the 
potter. Why have you made me thus? Besides, if the 
teacher will cease pounding the algebra fork, and tap even 
gently the language fork, she will get a most beautiful 
"hum," and the "hum" is the thing. There is nothing 
accomplished without it. You may get a false "hum"; 
but you cannot get a genuine response, a response that 
has educational value, unless the subject causes a sympa- 
thetic vibration in the soul of the pupil. There is no 
fact in pedagogy more clearly demonstrated than this; 



Education for Democracy rj 

and the other fact, too, that different children will respond 
to different subjects is equally well established. 

NEEDS OF THE CHILDREN NOT RECOGNIZED 

We have failed to adapt the work of the schools to 
the needs of the child and we have sought by merely 
pounding to get a response; no one knows better than 
the teacher how deathlike is the silence in most cases. 
It is drill, drill, drill, coax, persuade, threaten, and a 
hundred other things, day after day, until her life is 
almost worn away, and yet many of her pupils seem 
totally insensate to her efforts. The pupil stands it as 
long as he can, this hammering and pounding, until one 
morning his seat is vacant and he has left school to take 
his place in the world, unprepared for its problems. 
The teacher usually rejoices that he is gone, for her 
burdens will be considerably lighter; but really she 
should not rejoice. There was nothing wrong with the 
pupil. The trouble was that she had not struck a respon- 
sive chord in his soul. She was too intent upon driving 
into his consciousness certain textbook information and 
lost sight of the boy himself. However, the teacher is 
not to blame. She is laboring under a system that is 
ruthless in its requirements and tells her that she must 
do these things just as she does do them. The school 
board is not to blame, for public opinion makes demands 
on it in no uncertain terms. Thus it goes on from year 
to year, and the children are being sacrificed to the 
Moloch of the traditional classical college. 

Of course, there are some fundamentals every child 
must have. Every child must learn to do the figuring 
necessary in business; he must learn to speak and write 
effectively so far as he will find it necessary to do so in 
everyday life; he must learn to read and acquire a taste 



_ 



14 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

for reading; he must leam to spell the words he uses in 
his writing; and he must leam to write a legible hand. 
Every child must meet these minimtmi requirements 
whether it suits his fancy or not. But there is little 
doubt that the minimum requirements in these studies 
can be met without the difficulties we are having at 
present. The arithmetic the average person needs in 
business includes less than one-half the topics we are now 
trying to teach. Let us teach these necessary topics 
thoroughly and in connection with subjects in which the 
child is interested, and not make life a burden to him 
by trying to make him leam aliquot parts, compoimd 
proportion, compound interest, cube root, and a dozen 
other such topics as should never have been put in an 
arithmetic for children. The same is true of our language 
work in the schools. Nine-tenths of the formal grammar 
we teach in our schools could be eliminated and no one 
would be any worse off. The child needs practical drill 
in language and not so much theoretical drill in formal 
grammar, most of which he forgets as fast as he learns it. 

In spelling we drill the child on thousands of words 
he will never use. The average business man" does not 
use over 2,500 words, and the child could leam to spell 
these without much trouble. There are 180 days in a 
school year, and in seven years, by learning to spell two 
words a day, the child would know how to spell 2,520 
words. But, as it is, we give him ten or fifteen words a 
day, and in many cases more. He spreads his attention 
over so many words that he does not leam to spell even 
the common words in the average man's everyday 
vocabulary. 

The same is true of the other fundamental studies. 
We should strip them of their superfluities and require 
the child to leam only the minimum essentials. He 



, Education for Democracy 15 

could do this in much less time, with much less worry 
to himself and the teachers, and more thoroughly than 
at present. Instead of acquiring habits that will militate 
against his success in his later school and life work, he 
should be forming those habits without which success 
is impossible. The minimum essentials in the subjects 
referred to above should be completed by the end of the 
sixth grade, and, from there on, the child should be 
introduced to a rich, differentiated program of work and 
studies that will find a response in his life. The course 
of study in the last five grades of our schools should be 
broad enough to meet the needs and capacities of every 
child. It should satisfy the book-minded child who 
wants to prepare for college — either the classical college 
or the technical school; and it should satisfy the motor- 
minded child who wants to work with his hands. Manual 
training, including work in wood, metal, stone, concrete, 
cooking and sewing, agriculture, horticulture, weaving, 
basket making, etc., should be accessible to the child 
who "himis" to such things. Let us remember that 
work of this kind possesses a great educational value in 
helping the child to bring about a proper coordination 
between his nerve and muscle centers, and this is a most 
important phase of education. We must have a broader 
onception of our work than merely to give the child a 
little knowledge he will need in practical life, or certain 
information educated people are supposed to have. We 
must educate the child, and this means that we must 
develop his latent resources, whatever they be. But we 
must not be so foolish as to try to create in him powers 
he does not possess. 

We do not mean by such a program as here suggested 
to leave the work of the schools to the whims of the child. 
But we are to study the child, his aptitudes and capacities, 



i6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and arrange his work accordingly. We are not to leave 
the work to the fancy of the child any more than the 
skilled dietitian would leave the child's eating to his fancy. 
The dietitian would study the food needs and capacities 
of the child and then hold him strictly to such a regimen, 
whether it suited his fancy or not. So we must make 
out our school regimen to meet his needs and capacities 
and hold him to it in the same way. Such a program 
would possess all the virility that the old standpat edu- 
cator could desire. It would hold the child's interests 
and attention, cause him to put effort into his work, and 
keep him in school until he had finished the course. 

' TRAINING FOR SERVICE 

We must remember, too, that the great issue in American 
education to-day is vocational training — not the voca- 
tional training that is narrow, enslaving, but that which 
gives a broad outlook on life and prepares for complete 
living in the fullest sense of the term. Our government 
owes it to our boys and girls to teach them how to make 
a living. It owes this to them first and it should pay 
this debt first. Then, if it has time, it should pay the 
other debts it owes. While the problem of vocational 
training has been attacked in a few places, it is wholly 
unsolved in the country, and we have no right to boast 
of our educational system until we have made it possible 
for every boy and girl to have that training necessary to 
happy and successful lives. Before a recent Congress 
it was declared that of the twelve and a half million 
people engaged in agriculture in the United States, not 
more than i per cent had had adequate training ; and when 
we investigate other industries, we find conditions not 
much better. Before we lead the world in democracy, we 
must see that every boy and girl, high and low, rich and 



Education for Democracy ly 

poor, backward and precocious, the normal and the sub- 
normal, the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the foreign, the 
feeble-minded, all have just the training that will best 
fit them for their places in the world and help them to 
live the best lives of which they are capable. We must 
not be satisfied with filling their heads with a little 
exclusive information, but we must bring them into touch 
with those things and conditions that will help to bring 
to light their hidden powers and resources. 

Education for democracy means education for service. 
It places on each member of the race a duty and a respon- 
sibility for the well-being of every other member. It 
teaches us that no man can live to himself, and that the 
chief aim in life is not to gratify our own selfish desires, 
but to help our neighbor live the best life that is possible 
for him. The greatest man in the world's democracy will 
not be the one with the greatest amount of wealth, nor 
the one who is able to control the greatest amount of 
labor and capital; but he will be the one who is able to 
render the greatest amount of service to his fellows. To 
attain the highest ideal in education, we must have the 
conception of education of Him who "came not to be min- 
istered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom 
for many." We must have as our aim the preparation for 
service rather than preparation to be served, and to this 
end we must think less than we do of education as a 
veneer to be placed on the outside and more of that true 
culture of the heart which makes our sympathies go out 
to those whom we may serve. The quasi-culture we 
have been honoring in the past must take its place with 
the other relics of barbarism which the race is fast dis- 
carding. 

We have not gone far in our educational system in 
substituting the ideal of service for the other ideal of 



i8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

being served, but it is gratifying that we have made a 
start and have our faces turned in the right direction. 
We have begun to change our schools from places where 
only a few may receive a little exclusive information to 
places where all may work together in preparation for 
lives of service. The school of the future will not be 
exclusively an institution of learning; it will also be an 
institution of doing, and there our boys and girls will 
learn to work with their hands, to think with their heads, 
and to love with their hearts. The school workshop, the 
school kitchen and home training department, the school 
business training department, and the school farm are 
working a revolution in our educational ideals, and, no 
doubt, the school of the future will be a far different 
institution from that of to-day. The ideal of service 
will be its chief motive power, and each teacher will 
regard it as her mission to cause this ideal to permeate 
the minds and hearts of the boys and girls that the world 
may be made and kept "safe for democracy." 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Horace Mann's conception of public education and its influ- 
ence on the history of education in the United States. 

2. Mortality in the public schools and its causes. 

3. The place of the classics in an educational system. 

4. The varying capacities of school children and their significance 
in education. 

5. The defects of our public-school system when viewed as a 
means of preparing for citizenship in a democracy. 

Further Readings 

Chamberlain, Arthur H. Ideals and Democracy. Rand McNally 
& Co. 

Davis, Calvin O. Public Secondary Education. Rand McNally 

& Co. 
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Macmillan. 



Education for Democracy ig 

Kerschensteiner, Georg. Education for Citizenship. Rand Mc- 

Nally & Co. 
Lewis, William D. Democracy's High School. Houghton Mifflin 

Co. 
Moore, Ernest C. What Is Education? Ginn & Co. 
Smith, William Hawley. All the Children of All the People. 

Macmillan. 
Weeks, Arland D. The Education of To-morrow. Sturgis & 

Walton. 
Weeks, Ruth Mary. The People's School. Houghton Mifflin Co. 



' 



CHAPTER II 
LEARNING AND DOING 

IT WAS the opinion of the ancient Greek philosopher 
Anaxagoras that the superiority of man over the 
brute creation was due to his having hands. It would, 
of course, be impossible for us to prove or disprove the 
correctness of this statement; but, judging from the 
nature of the mind and the manner of its development, 
it is very probable that if God had made man without 
hands he would have been but little, if at all, superior 
to other animals. Nothing stimulates the intellectual 
faculties more than manual activity. When man began 
to construct, he began to think, and thus his intellectual 
development was brought about. If he had had no 
hands, he would not have come in contact with natural 
forces, nor been compelled to master their laws, and these 
laws would have meant no more to him than they do to 
the brute creation. His intellect would not have been 
quickened by his effort to influence his environment to 
serve his needs, and, since he would have had no oppor- 
tunity to apply the materials of his observation, his senses 
would have remained inert and have dwindled away. 
Indeed, it is impossible for us to conceive of man without 
the power of expression through manual activity. Man 
is naturally a maker of things, and this instinct has done 
more than any other to give him his present symmetry 
of body and grace of bearing, his superior intellect, and 
his beauty of soul. His ability to do and to make things 
is that which causes him to be in the image of his Creator. 

20 



Learning and Doing 21 

THE MIND AND THE HAND 

So intimate is the relation between the hand and the 
brain that one reflects the power of the other. The hand 
of the intelHgent man reflects that intelligence in its 
every movement. It looks intelligent and its touch gives 
the impression of intelligence. The fact is that there is 
the same intimate connection between the muscles of the 
hand and the nerve cells of the brain that exists between 
the muscles of the face and these nerve cells, and the 
intelligence of a person is indicated in the movement of 
his hands just as accurately as it is in the expression of 
his face. The muscles of the hand are directly connected 
with the brain, and when the mind develops, this develop- 
ment manifests itself in the movements and expression 
of the hand. The hand of the idiot is as expressionless 
as his face; it is listless and lacks the power of accurate 
movement. It lacks intelligence in its touch; when you 
take hold of it, it feels clammy and lacks the warmth 
and vitality of the intelligent hand. In fact, one of the 
most common methods of testing mentality is through 
the movements of the hand — its ability to thread a 
needle, to lace a shoe, to button clothes, and to do 
many other things for which accuracy of movement is 
required. Sequin, the great French-American physician, 
did more than any other man to improve the method 
of training the feeble-minded, and the secret of his 
success was due to the emphasis he placed on manual 
activity as a means of development. He saw the intimate 
relationship between the mind and the hand and sought 
to reach the mind through the hand. He believed that 
for the feeble-minded child the hand was the best organ 
of perception, and since his time others have been of 
the opinion that it is the best organ of perception, not 
only for the feeble-minded, but for the normal-minded 



22 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

as well. It is believed to be more directly connected 
with the brain than the other sense organs; at least 
through it the mind is more easily aroused. Montessori 
at first saw the importance of manual activity as a mind- 
awakener when dealing with the feeble-minded children, 
and she reasoned that what will do so much for a feeble- 
minded child is also good for the normal child. This led 
to the establishment of the Children's Home that has 
aroused so much interest in educational circles the world 
over. There are two important ideas in Montessori 's 
educational philosophy — freedom and manual activity. 
The latter is the more important of the two, for it is 
extremely doubtful whether there could be freedom until 
the child's interest has been aroused in his work through 
manual activity. 

The hand is a better revealer of character than the 
face. The face can be made to express what it does not 
feel, but not so the hand. It is always frank, open, 
honest, for man has not yet learned to control its expres- 
sion so as to deceive. Helen Keller says: **Not only 
is the hand as easy to recognize as the face, but it reveals 
its secrets more openly and unconsciously. People con- 
trol their countenances, but the hand is under no such 
restraint. It relaxes and becomes listless when the spirit 
is low and depressed; the muscles tighten when the mind 
is excited or the heart is glad, and permanent qualities 
stand written on it at all times." 

This all goes to show that there is an intimate relation- 
ship existing between the hand and the mind, and that 
whatever affects one affects the other. The hand not 
only reflects the states of the mind, but it has much to 
do in making these states what they are. The nerves of 
the hand tie it to the brain in a most intimate relationship 
and it is this relationship which makes the hand an 



Learning and Doing 23 

important factor in education. Angelo Mosso, the cele- 
brated Italian specialist, says: "The mutual relation of 
intelligence and movement is a most constant factor in 
nature." It was his opinion that the intellectuality of 
the Greeks was due to the emphasis placed on exercise. 
He thought that the more facile an animal was in the 
movement of its limbs, the more intelligent it was; that 
the elephant is more intelligent than most other animals 
because he uses not only his legs, but also his snout, 
as organs of movement. He held that man shows his 
superiority over the lower animals as much in the facility 
of his movements as in the power of his mind. 

RELATION OF PHYSICAL AND MENTAL TRAINING 

President G. Stanley Hall says: 

The cortical centers of the voluntary muscles extend over most 
of the lateral psychic zones of the brain, so that their culture is 
brain building. Every change of attention, and of psychic states 
generally, plays upon them unconsciously, modifying their tension 
in subtle ways, so that they may be called the organs of thought and 
feeling as well as of the will. Habit even determines the deeper 
strata of belief ; thought is repressed action ; and deeds, not words, 
are the language of complete men. The motor areas are closely 
related and largely identical with the psychic, and muscle culture 
develops brain centers as nothing else yet demonstrably does. 
Muscles are the vehicles of habituation, initiation, obedience, 
character, and even of manners and customs. For the young, 
motor education is cardinal; and, for all, education is incomplete 
without a motor side.i 

Educators and psychologists are virtually agreed on 
these basic truths. Ex-President Eliot of Harvard Uni- 
versity says: ** Accurate work with carpenter's tools, 
lathe, or hammer and anvil, or violin, or piano, or pencil, 
or crayon, or camel's hair brush (and we might add the 
scissors, the needle, and the rolling pin) trains well the 

1 Youth, pp. 7, 8, 9. 



24 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

same nerves and ganglia with which we do what is 
ordinarily called thinking." Professor F. W. Parker says: 
"It is impossible to do all-sided, educative work without 
training in hand work. Manual training is the most 
important factor in primary education, and it remains a 
prominent factor in all education." Again, he says: 
"Making has done more for the human race than the 
exercise of any, if not all, of the other modes of expression. 
It is absolutely indispensable to normal physical develop- 
ment; it has a mighty influence upon brain building." 
Professor John Dcwey says: "The child who employs 
his hands intelligently in the schoolroom, in due propor- 
tion is satisfying one of the most powerful interests 
within him. He is cheerful, he is a picture of health, and 
his best emotions and impulses are easily kept active." 
Again, he says: "The greatest mistake in education con- 
sists in shutting children away from natiire, and in trying 
to teach them almost entirely from books." 

It is strange that we have been so long finding out 
these important truths, and stranger still that after we 
have discovered them, and have them proved to us 
beyond a shadow of a doubt, we do not make use of them. 
We go on in the same old way and pay but little attention 
to what we have learned. Although we know that it 
takes the motor side of education to make it complete, that 
"deeds, not words, are the language of complete men," 
we go on with our work as though we did not know it. 

THOUGHT AND ACTION 

One of the cardinal truths in education is that the 
hand and the mind are parts of the same system; one 
cannot be developed without at the same time develop- 
ing the other, and when we act on one, we influence the 
other. Heretofore we have been working with the brain, 



Learning and Doing 25 

and have made no conscious effort until recently to reach 
the mind through the hand. We have just half completed 
the cycle; and, instead of developing ** complete men," 
we have made knowing the end of our work, and have 
failed to establish the proper relation between thought 
and action. The products of our schools have been 
accused of being one-sided, theoretical, visionary, out of 
touch with real things, and, if President Hall is correct 
in saying that "deeds, not words, are the language of 
complete men," the accusation is just. We have been 
too much under the influence of the Ciceronian philosophy, 
that **to live is to think," not realizing that "thought is 
repressed action " and incomplete unless it becomes action. 
The man who thinks is but half a man; to be complete, 
he must execute his thoughts and give them concrete 
form. Indeed, a man cannot do normal thinking without 
stopping to execute his thoughts and to test their accuracy 
by applying them to actual conditions. Thought arises 
from things, and, to be kept accurate, it must be constantly 
referred back to them. Thought is impossible without 
words, and it is equally impossible without the things 
from which it arises. As there is no sound without the 
ear, no light without the eye, so there is no complete 
thought without the object to which it belongs. 

Francis Bacon, the founder of modem philosophy, is 
also the founder of modem education. When he laid 
aside the old deductive philosophy of Aristotle and the 
schoolmen, and based his philosophy on induction, he 
knocked the props from under the system of the abstract 
word "education" of the Greeks. In saying that we 
must base oiu* reasoning on things, he also said that we 
must base our education on things. He saw that, as the 
system of deductive philosophy of the Greeks had led 
them far from the truth, so had their educational system 



26 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

based on words led them far out of touch with actual 
conditions; hence he decided that the ''end of man is an 
action, not a thought"; that "education is the cultiva- 
tion of a just and legitimate familiarity between the 
mind and things." 

CLINGING TO PAST IDEALS 

The conservatism of men in education is nowhere 
demonstrated more clearly than in their clinging to 
educational principles long after the reason for doing so 
no longer exists. No one will doubt the advances that 
have been made in the scientific world as a result of the 
Baconian philosophy. In fact, since Bacon's time, the 
world has been made over. We have entirely cut loose 
from the past in medicine, physics, chemistry, and the 
other physical sciences, and no one would think to-day 
of basing research in these sciences on deduction. We 
gain OMT knowledge of them from a study of things. 
What the ancients gave us in them has been brushed 
aside as worthless rubbish. But in education we still 
cling to the past, although there is every reason to brush 
it aside that there was in the case of scientific knowledge. 
In fact, educational principles must go hand in hand 
with scientific principles, or they are worthless. Plato 
said, "All the useful arts are degrading, and the end of 
education is to cultivate the thinking powers," and we 
are willing to risk all on his judgment. At the time of 
the Renaissance, when men were digging from their hid- 
ing places the manuscripts of the Greeks, some fellow 
happened to dig out this philosophy of Plato, and it has 
had such a tremendous influence that to-day we are unable 
to break loose from it. Our educational system is largely 
based on words because Plato, on one bright morning two 
thousand years ago, happened to feel a little lazy and 



Learning and Doing 2y 

gave expression to the feeling that he was glad he did not 
have to work. He lived in a land where useful work 
was performed by slaves, where all labor was menial, and 
he knew nothing of the useful arts as we know them to-day. 
However, had he even looked into things a little more 
clearly, he would have realized that it was the work of 
men's hands that gave Athens its chief glory and made it 
the admiration of the ages. 

Bacon, by his system of inductive philosophy, has done 
much to overcome the evil of Plato's philosophy and has 
paved the way for the union of thought and action, which 
bhould never have been divorced. Comenius' aphorism 
"Learn to do by doing" leads in the same direction. In 
fact, all great educational thinkers have emphasized the 
importance of maintaining the proper relation between 
thought and action. Pestalozzi, Froebel, Horace Mann, 
Herbert Spencer, G. Stanley Hall, Dr. Eliot, and Mon- 
tessori have all brushed aside the philosophies of Plato 
and Aristotle and hold that the end of education is to 
cultivate the proper relation between thought and action. 
The reason why the lost relationship is not restored in 
practice is because of the conservatism of the man who 
has direct control of educational practice, because of his 
lack of adaptability and his failure to catch the spirit 
of the reform. 

It is strange that so few of our leading school men have 
caught the spirit of the kindergarten and of manual 
training. They have caught the letter, and we have 
kindergartens and manual training schools in abundance ; 
but few have caught the real spirit of the relation between 
thought and action, of the relation between the motor 
and the psychic states. In many places manual training 
is emphasized because of its vocational value, and this 
has raised a storm of protest from the culturist who 



28 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

abhors the material. This has made its progress slower 
than it would have been had its true meaning been under- 
stood. For instance, few of our best schools have caught 
the full meaning of Ruskin when he said: "The youth 
who has once learned to take a straight shaving off a 
plank, or to draw a fine curve without faltering, or to 
lay a brick level in its mortar, has also learned a multi- 
tude of other matters which no lips of man could ever 
teach him." Rousseau said: **The student will learn 
more in one hour of manual labor than he will retain from 
a whole day's verbal instruction; that the things them- 
selves are their best explanation." 

THOUGHT AND ACTION NOT DIVORCED IN PRIMITIVE 

EDUCATION 

In outlining our educational system we can learn a 
wholesome lesson from our half -civilized forefathers. The 
primitive man never thought of divorcing thought and 
action; in fact, he emphasized the action and was willing 
to let the thought take care of itself, and what progress 
he made in his manner of living was due to this fact. He 
never gave his son book lessons in the use of the bow and 
arrow or the tomahawk; but he placed these weapons in 
his hands and let him learn through practice. He learned 
to fish by fishing; he learned to spear by spearing; and 
he learned to swim by swimming. We have every reason 
to believe that his intellectual progress kept pace with 
the progress he made along practical lines. We have no 
reason to doubt that the American Indian's intellectual 
attainment kept pace with his ability to use the weapons 
of the himt and warfare in practice. In fact, from the 
very nature of things, it must have done so. The primi- 
tive man was compelled to be a believer in the practical, 
and it was only when education was taken out of the 



Learning and Doing 2g 

hands of the practical man and put into the hands of 
priests and other men of leisure that there was a failure 
to maintain the proper relation between the theoretical 
and the practical. This class feeling that labor is degrad- 
ing has caused us to divorce the science from the art and 
to emphasize in our schools history, mathematics, and 
literature, without the practical application of these to 
actual conditions. In fact, our education, under such 
conditions, has left off at the point where it was begin- 
ning to be of service. 

Nothing has done more to corrupt the morals of men 
than the idea that it is beneath the dignity of the gentle- 
man to engage in manual labor; and nothing has done 
more to raise moral standards than the turn education 
has taken during the last few years in the direction of 
the practical. The man who deals in words alone is 
sure to wander far from the truth. He thus cultivates 
the habit of being out of line with truth. On the other 
hand, the man who never stops with an idea until it is 
expressed in tangible form is constantly measuring his 
ideas by the truth and cultivates the habit of honesty. 
The man who works with his hands cannot deceive, for his 
work is there to show for itself. The false with him is cer- 
tain to be exposed ; but with the man who deals in thought 
alone, and never seeks to test the accuracy of that thought 
by applying it to realities, all is mere speculation, and 
there is not cultivated in his mind that love of truth 
which is characteristic of the worker; hence it is not 
without reason that we speak of the "honest sons of toil." 

EDUCATION BASED ON WORDS LEADS TO CONSERVATISM 

Another weakness of a system of education based on 
books is that it tends too much to conservatism. The 
man who studies books has his face turned toward 



. 



JO Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the past. He is constantly looking to the past as the 
golden age of the world. As long as men were dominated 
by the deductive philosophy of Aristotle, they made no 
progress, because they were tied securely to the past. 
This looking backward, perhaps, did more than any 
other thing to bring about the stagnation of civilization 
that caused it to sink so low during the Middle Ages, 
and we have every reason to believe that it would have 
gone even lower had it not been revived by coming in 
contact with real things. 

The upper classes in all countries have always been 
the conservative classes, because they have not been com- 
pelled to labor and have devoted their time to mere 
intellectual pursuits. In the English government the 
conservative element has been the House of Lords, 
and it has been driven to every reform by the man who 
worked with his hands. The House of Commons has 
taken the lead in every progressive governmental reform, 
and the more it has gotten into the possession of the 
thinker, the more conservative it has become and the 
more it has become necessary for the worker on the out- 
side to bring pressure to bear. The man who works with 
his hands and deals with actual conditions can easily go 
from the things that are to what they ought to be. He 
is constantly seeing room for improvement and is by 
nature a reformer. The world stood still as long as it 
was ruled by the mere thinker, and it began to move 
fon^^ard when Bacon taught men that "education is the 
cultivation of a just and legitimate familiarity between 
the mind and things." Youth is progressive because it 
is the time of action; old age is conservative because it 
is the period of thought and inactivity. The man who 
ceases to act loses his adaptability and is, for this reason, 
a conservative. 



Learning and Doing ji 

WORK AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION 

The need of the times is the creation in the minds of 
boys and girls of a proper attitude toward work. At 
present the average boy knows but little about real labor, 
and his aim is to avoid it. Indeed, he has been taught 
by his elders that the chief purpose of his schooling is 
to prepare him to make a living without work, and his 
aim is to enter some vocation where little manual labor 
is required. This attitude toward work has caused such 
a tremendous movement from the country to the town and 
city that the very foundation of our social institutions is 
threatened. The movement toward the education of the 
masses without changing our educational system to meet 
their conditions and needs, has tended to fill them with 
the ideals of the old system, and this has resulted in the 
growth of a great host of professional and semi-profes- 
sional men who have a false attitude toward the world's 
work and whose chief purpose is to make a living without 
work. There are thousands of men in o\ir towns and 
cities to-day eking out a miserable existence, of no use to 
themselves or to anyone else, who would have made 
useful members of society had they been trained to have 
a proper conception of labor. They have been trained 
to think it degrading to work with their hands, and they 
would rather undergo any kind of hardship than put on 
their overalls and go into the workshop, to the farms, or 
into the factory. 

The feeling of contempt for labor has influenced women 
even more than men. The average woman has no proper 
conception of work and feels that manual labor is degrad- 
ing. In many cases her training has led her to believe 
that it is her part to have a good time and that others 
must minister to her wants and even to her whims. The 
average girl knows nothing about work because her 



S2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

mother, laboring under a wrong conception, has done 
all the work around the home in order to give her daughter 
time to devote to her music and other studies. The 
daughter, from the beginning, is freed from all responsi- 
bility; no wonder that when she comes into a home of 
her own she has no proper conception of her part in 
helping to carry its burdens. Mother has shielded her 
from responsibility during her girlhood; no wonder that 
she expects her husband to do the same during her woman- 
hood. The sad part is that, in the great majority of 
cases, the husband is not able to do this; and thousands 
of women, brought up to shirk responsibility and to have 
a good time, are compelled, when they come into homes 
of their own, to do their own work, and, not having been 
trained to have a proper conception of it, live miserable 
lives, feeling that they are doing that which is unworthy 
of them. This would not be the case if the work idea 
were given a more prominent place in our schools and 
our girls were compelled to do work, and to have a proper 
attitude toward it. The greatest weakness of our schools 
is the lack of definiteness. This weakness is shown 
nowhere more forcibly than in their failure to train the 
girls for the work they will have to do when they come 
into practical life. While about 95 per cent of them will 
sooner or later become homemakers and have to meet 
the responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood, their 
school course seems to be laid out wholly with a view to 
their enjoyment of their leisure. Music, literature, and 
art have their places in the education of girls, but they 
do not belong in the same class with domestic science and 
art, or training for homemaking. Everything in the 
girl's course should prepare her for the work she is going 
to do. It should all be arranged with a view to giving 
her a proper attitude toward her work; for whether she 



Learning and Doing jj 

loves her work in the world or not will depend upon the 
ideals instilled in her mind in the schools. If our girls 
in school were trained to love work and to have a proper 
attitude toward it, cooking, sewing, and the care of home 
and children would be as fascinating to them as those 
things in which they now take pride. Not only this: 
they would be better physically, mentally, and morally. 
They would be happier, and would make everybody 
around them happier. They would make their homes 
brighter, happier, and more prosperous, and would 
restore them to their proper place as the bulwarks of 
our civilization. 

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF JESUS 

Manual activity not only develops mental and moral 
strength, but it develops character in the highest sense 
of the term by putting our ideals in the proper plane. 
It was not without reason that the Great Teacher said, 
''He is greatest who is the servant of all." He had a 
deeper insight than any other man into human character 
and knew better than others what it takes to develop it. 
He understood better the great secret moral forces of the 
universe and saw that the ability and willingness to serve 
was at the bottom of all true growth. He realized that 
such an educational philosophy as that of Plato would 
lead to weakness of body, mind, and soul, and he set 
over against it his ideal of greatness through service. 
His reply to the world's philosophy of selfishness was 
that "even the Son of man came not to be ministered 
unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many." 

After ninteen hundred years we are just beginning to 
understand this philosophy of Jesus. So deeply was the 
opposite conception imbedded in the minds of men that it 



34 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

has taken and will yet take a long time to remove it. It is 
hard for us to realize that the lord of creation is the man 
who works with his hands in a service of love for others. 
For some time we have realized that work with the hands 
develops physical strength; we are just beginning to 
realize that it also develops mental and moral strength; 
and here comes the Great Teacher to tell us that it also 
gives us mastery of spiritual forces and makes us lords 
of creation: **He that would be greatest, let him be 
the servant of all." Not imtil we thoroughly under- 
stand this philosophy, and have based our institutions 
on it, shall we attain the highest conceptions of life. 
We can see now the emptiness of the ancients' conception 
that he is greatest who has at his mercy the greatest 
ntimber of human lives. We no longer regard Alexander 
as great because he ruled the world; we even regard him 
as the weakest of men because he was unable to rule 
himself. We have little regard for the medieval lord 
whose greatness was measured by the number of his 
vassals. We have little sympathy with the pre-bellum 
conception that he was greatest who had the greatest 
number of slaves. In the business world we no longer 
tolerate the selfish business methods of a Harriman or a 
Rogers, and the world is against Kaiser Wilhelm for 
plunging it into a war to gratify his own selfish ambitions. 
This all goes to show what progress we have made toward 
the ideal that Jesus gave the world of greatness through 
service. But, in spite of the progress that has been made, 
we are far from a complete understanding of his message 
and farther still from an application of his ideals in 
practice. 

It is strange that whatever progress has been mads 
toward this conception of greatness through service has 
come in spite of our educational system. Our schools 



Learning and Doing 35 

have stood in the way of such progress and have endeav- 
ored to inculcate in the minds of boys and girls the ideal 
of greatness through the mastery of the lives of others- 
They have based their work on the philosophy of Plato 
rather than on the philosophy of Jesus; and, if they are 
to become the great factors in moral progress that they 
should be, we must revise their work and bring it into 
harmony with those great moral forces that are working 
on the outside. The school program must be arranged 
so as to prepare boys and girls for lives of service. The 
school must teach the dignity of labor by making the 
workshop a part of its equipment. Boys and girls must 
continue to study books, but to study them, not as an 
end in themselves, but for what they contain that can 
be used in a life of practical service. In the ideal school 
the student will be given an opportunity to make a prac- 
tical application of every idea he gains in his study or 
observation. He will not be required to go on day after 
day, month after month, or even year after year, as is 
now the case, without being able to test the accuracy of 
the knowledge he has acquired; but he will be given an 
opportunity to apply it as he acquires it. In the school 
of the future all forms of manual activity will be given a 
prominent place because of its importance not only in 
developing physical, mental, and moral strength, but in 
arousing the pupil's self -activity, which will bring about 
his complete development. Manual activity will become 
an important feature of the educational system of the 
future, because, to quote from Francis W. Parker, "the 
foundation of education consists in training a child to 
work, to love work, to put the energy of his mind and 
body into his work, to do that which best develops his 
body, mind, and soul; to do that work most needed for 
the elevation of mankind." 



j6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Work as a factor in the education of children. 

2. Manual activity and moral training. 

3. The educational philosophy of Jesus, as seen in the Four 
Gospels. 

4. The correlation of knowledge gained from books with that 
gained from practical affairs. 

5. The system of school credit for home and industrial work. 

Further Readings 

Gesell, Arnold L., and Beatrice Chandler. The Normal Child and 

Primary Education. Ginn & Co. 
Hall, G. Stanley. Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. 

D. Appleton & Co. 
Ham, Charles H. Mind and Hand. American Book Co. 
Hughes, James L. Froebel's Educational Laws, pp. 248-259. 

D. Appleton & Co. 
Lee, Joseph. Play in Education. Macmillan. 
Row, Robert K. The Educational Meaning of the Manual Arts 

and Industries. Row, Peterson & Co. 
Tanner, Amy Eliza. The Child. Rand McNally & Co. 



B 



CHAPTER III 

SELF-ACTIVITY IN EDUCATION 

Y SELF-ACTIVITY we mean the activity that 
originates with self. It is the activity in which 
the whole being is enlisted. In activity the pupil may be 
putting just a part of himself into his work, and this is 
more than likely to be the case ; but in self -activity all the 
powers are absorbed in the work at hand. They are used 
to their limit, and there results a symmetrical growth ; it 
is extremely doubtful whether there is any real develop- 
ment unless there is a harmonious use of all the faculties. 
Whenever we use a faculty, it will grow, but there is a 
difference between growth and development; there is 
also a difference between the development of one faculty 
and the harmonious development of all the faculties. 
The pupil who is self-active is like a plant in a wholesome 
environment, with a rich soil, plenty of air, rain, and sun- 
shine adapted to its needs. Such a plant grows from 
within outward and is harmoniously developed because 
it has found its proper environment. So the self -activity 
of the pupil indicates that he has found an environment 
suited to his needs. 

Self -activity does not mean that the pupil is to be left 
to his own whims. It does not mean that he is to pass 
from one thing to another until he finds something that 
suits his fancy. It does not mean that he is to select 
his own course of study, or his own methods of study, 
for very often he does not know what is best for himself. 
He does not know what his needs are, and the greatest 
task of the teacher is to study the characteristics and 
needs of each particular child until she knows his needs 
better than the child knows them himself. The dietitian 

37 



38 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

studies the child's needs and the nature of the several 
foods so that he is able to adapt the one to the other. 
This is just what the teacher must do; she must be so 
well acquainted with the child's mental and moral needs 
that she will be able to adapt one to the other with exact 
precision. When she has done this, the child will appro- 
priate as his own that which she has laid out for him, 
and will be self -active in its performance. The external 
stimulus of the teacher will become the internal stimulus 
of the pupil. 

Then there is another important phase of self-activity 
that we must not overlook. There is such a divergence 
between the instinct of the child and its execution that 
we cannot always be sure that the method of execution 
we have selected for him is in line with his instincts. 
The child has the instinct of curiosity, for instance, but 
that instinct does not manifest itself long when he is 
brought face to face with the multiplication table. Civi- 
lization has side-tracked him, as it were, and he is often 
compelled to do things that his natural instincts do not 
call for. He must learn the mechanics of reading before 
he can read and thus fulfill his natural desire for the 
acquisition of knowledge; he must learn the mechanics 
of numbers before he can satisfy his felt number needs; 
and in almost every line of work he takes up, there is a 
mechanical side that must be mastered before the real 
subject can be enjoyed. There is a period of drudgery 
which every child must go through with; but in most 
cases, the prospect beyond will lead him through this 
darkest-period-just-bef ore-dawn without much trouble. 

THIS BASIC LAW NOT OBSERVED 

But in spite of these limitations self-activity is the 
greatest law ever discovered in pedagogy. In fact, it is 



Self-Activity in Education 3Q 

the basic law of pedagogy, and other laws not fotinded 
upon it are valueless. The teacher fails in her work as 
she fails to arouse the pupil's self -activity. She may 
pour into his head information of various sorts, but 
unless this information reacts on the pupil and brings 
about his self-activity, it misses the mark. Information 
is to the teacher what medicine is to the physician: its 
purpose is to bring about a healthful reaction of the 
bodily organs. If it fails to do this, the physician is 
foolish to go on giving it day after day, and the teacher 
is equally foolish to go on day after day giving the child 
information when that information is failing to bring 
about a proper reaction in his life. Knowledge that does 
not result in self -activity is as worthless as medicine that 
does not result in a proper reaction of the bodily organs. 
If this is true, it is evident that the results obtained 
by the average teacher are very meager. The average 
teacher is content to go on day after day, merely cram- 
ming into the child's head certain bits of information, 
and she never stops to find out whether or not such in- 
formation is bringing about the proper reaction — which 
goes to show that we have not passed the first stage in 
the educational process. We have been satisfied with 
the pupil's being a passive recipient and have not sought 
to make him an active inquirer. Teachers to-day, the 
country over, are engaged in filling their pupils' heads 
with the customary quantum of information. In fact, 
teachers and parents have leagued themselves together 
for this purpose. The teacher's efficiency is measured by 
her ability to cram into her pupils' heads this information. 
Like Dombey, most parents are anxious for their children 
to be well informed, and they are not satisfied with the 
teacher's work unless she succeeds in filling their child- 
ren's heads with the customary amount of information. 

4 



40 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

They want their children's minds, like their bodies, 
** dressed in the prevailing fashion." They want them 
adorned in ornaments of Greek, Latin, the history of 
Chaldea, and mathematical lore, not because they will 
ever need these things, but because it is the educational 
fashion. The mistress of the South Sea Islands would 
feel forever disgraced to appear in company without the 
accustomed beads around her neck, earrings in her ears, 
and nose ring in her nose. We all want to dress accord- 
ing to the prevailing fashion, and this is as true mentally 
as it is physically. We feel disgraced to appear in com- 
pany with our compeers and not to know the things they 
expect us to know. This is why our school curricultim 
is filled with many things that do not satisfy in us any 
real need. It would, indeed, be interesting to make an 
unprejudiced survey of our school program in order to 
find out exactly how many things we require our pupils 
to study just because it is customary for educated men 
and women to know them. 

Such emphasis in our schools on the accumulation 
of information has made them mere cramming machines. 
They are little more than intellectual hothouses, where, 
like Dr. Blimber, we produce all kinds of intellectual 
shrubs in all kinds of seasons. We produce "mental 
green peas at Christmas time, and intellectual aspara- 
gus all the year round." "Mathematical gooseberries 
(and very sour ones, too) are produced at all un- 
timely seasons, and all kinds of Greek and Latin 
vegetables are gathered from the driest twigs of boys 
under the frostiest circumstances." We laugh at Dr. 
Blimber, but the average teacher is doing things just 
about as he did them, and the average school is little 
more than an intellectual hothouse where boys and 
girls are made to bloom at all xmtimely seasons. Dr. 



Self-Activity in Education 41 

Blimber took charge of only ten boys at a time; but he 
had always on hand enough information for a hundred, 
and, as Dickens says, it was his delight to stuff the 
unhappy ten with it. No wonder that under similar 
circumstances our pupils either take no interest in their 
school work and like Blitherstone escape the evil effects 
of its methods, or like Tozer become "learned but not 
educated," or like Briggs, who had his knowledge packed 
so tight in his mind that he could not get at anything 
he wanted. No wonder that children take no interest in 
their school work, when no attention is paid to their needs, 
when the whole time of school is given up to cramming 
into their heads the dry facts of textbooks. We re- 
quire them to study the history that educated people 
are supposed to know and give no time to satisfying 
their history needs; we require them to go through 
the arithmetic, the algebra, the geometry, not because 
they will need these things in practical life, but to 
satisfy the prevailing fashion. The educated man is sup- 
posed to have read Latin; therefore boys and girls must 
try to read it or at least **go through with it," whether 
they get any good out of it or not. Indeed, this acqui- 
sition of the required amount of knowledge, or, rather, 
the going over the required field, has become in our 
schools so mechanical that about all that is expected of 
the graduate is that he shall have gone over the required 
ground, and few questions are asked as to his proficiency. 
He must have read Caesar, but is not expected to know 
much about him; he must have studied algebra, but in 
most cases he studied it so long ago that he has forgotten 
how to solve a simple equation. There are certain things 
in English literature that one must have read to be edu- 
cated, but few questions are asked as to the extent of 
such knowledge. In most cases the things studied in 



42 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

school are not mastered; they are not made a part of 
the pupil's life and they mean nothing to him when he 
goes out into the world. It is said that a professor of 
English in one of the northern universities went abroad 
with his two daughters, who had just graduated from 
high school. They were traveling over the country made 
famous by Scott's Lady of the Lake. The father was 
greatly touched by the many happy memories that were 
brought to him by different places visited and he could 
not understand why the girls seemed not to be moved at 
all. He said to them, "Girls, how is it that you can 
pass over these historic places hallowed by the many 
references to them in Scott's Lady of the Lake? They 
call to my mind the most sacred memories and stir my 
soul to its very depth. How can you remain unmoved? " 
To this the girls replied that "they had had all of Scott 
they wanted in the high school and they were sick and 
tired of him." It seems, in the great majority of cases, 
that when our pupils have run the accustomed number 
of times around our educational race course, they are 
ready to quit; they breathe a sigh of relief that it is all 
over. They lay aside their books, and 98 per cent of 
them never refer to them again. Then, in the face of all 
this, is it an untimely question to ask if our intellectual 
medicine is bringing about the proper reaction ? All fair- 
minded people must admit that the cramming process is 
a failure, that the intellectual hothouse methods are not 
adapted to the growing lives of boys and girls. 

STAGES IN EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS 

In the hothouse method the efficiency of the pupil is 
measured by his passive receptivity, and the efficiency of 
the teacher is measured by her ability to cram into his 
head the customary information. The good pupil sits 



Self-Activity in Education 4J 

with his mouth, eyes, and ears open to take in what the 
teacher gives him; the bad pupil is the one who is pre- 
pres-umptuous enough to question the efficacy of such 
methods and manifests a certain degree of independence. 
Under such conditions it is an unpardonable offense for 
the pupil to think for himself. He must accept without 
question what the teacher and the textbook say. That 
the educational world has not long ago seen the absurdity 
of such methods goes to show how it has been dominated 
by tradition, and before our schools are made really 
educational institutions we must have the courage to 
free them from the domination of the past and adapt 
our education to the needs of the pupil. 

In the first stage of educational progress the pupil is 
a passive recipient of information. In the next stage 
he passively organizes this information. He is not yet 
an independent thinker, however; he merely reflects on 
the thoughts of others. These thoughts pass through 
his mind and he passively reviews them. He accepts 
what the book and the teacher say without question. 
In this stage the pupil thinks over his history lesson, 
his geography lesson, or his civics; but he does this to 
fix the thoughts of the textbook more firmly in his mind. 
He never thinks of using that thought and of making 
it productive of other and deeper thoughts. 

Then we come to the next step in educational progress, 
in which the pupil is passively active. In this stage the 
stimulus comes from without as in the other two stages 
mentioned before. While the pupil is active, he is active at 
the command of the teacher and is mechanically active; 
his life is not in what he is doing. He writes his compo- 
sitions because the teacher requires him to do so ; he makes 
the table in the manual training shop, not because there 
is something in him that will give no rest until he makes 



44 Present Bay Tendencies in Education 

the table, but because the course of study requires him 
to do a certain amount of work to receive a credit. He 
is active in what he does; but he is only partly active. 
He does not lend himself entirely to his work. 

The next step in educational progress comes when the 
pupil becomes an actim inquirer. This step is impor- 
tant in the accumulation of knowledge; in fact, there 
can be no real accumulation of knowledge without it. 
When the pupil becomes an active inquirer, he takes the 
lead in his work. He enters into it with the same enthu- 
siasm with which a child enters his play. His whole 
being is active and responsive and is in the proper attitude 
to make the knowledge which he receives a part of him. 
When the pupil becomes an active inquirer, he becomes 
selective. He does not take ever3rthing that comes his 
way, but he selects only that which satisfies his needs. 
He may passively receive what is not adapted to his 
needs, but he will not become active under such conditions. 

For the pupil to become an active inquirer, it is neces- 
sary that he be in good physical condition; that the 
conditions under which he works be wholesome — the 
proper temperature and ventilation in the room, the 
desks properly adjusted, and the tone of the room posi- 
tively exhilarating — and that his work be adapted to 
his present needs and in line with his instincts. Under 
such conditions the child is in a position to enter into 
his work actively. He is in a position to take the lead, 
and his teacher should let him do so. In his number 
work he should be permitted to make his own investi- 
gations. He should become a problem-finder as well 
as a problem-solver. At present he is a problem-solver 
almost altogether. The teacher assigns to him a list of 
problems, and his business is to solve them. Under 
such conditions it is no wonder that he takes so little 



Self-Activity in Education 45 

interest in his work; no wonder that he solves the prob- 
lems mechanically and gets but little from them. But 
if he were permitted to make his own problems, or if 
they were selected from practical experiences, he would 
enter into his work with a full enthusiasm. About all 
that is needed to arouse the child's self-activity in his 
number work is to adapt the work to his needs, and this 
is not as difficult a task as it at first seems. The number 
needs of all the pupils in a given class are about the 
same, and we should have no difficulty in finding out 
what they are. We cannot, however, select a text in 
arithmetic made for New England children and use it 
in classes composed of Texas children. 

In reading, the pupils should be given a wide range in 
the selection of their reading material. They should not 
be required to take up a reader and read the lessons in 
the order in which they come. Certain selections may be 
read with more profit at certain seasons of the year. 
The teacher should always endeavor to have the class 
read a selection when the occasion is best suited to 
impress it on their minds. Selections about great men, 
for instance, should be read on or about their birthdays. 
Then it will kill the interest of a class in reading to require 
every pupil to read every selection. The aim in the read- 
ing class is to teach the pupil to read silently and aloud, 
and to create in him an interest in good reading. If the 
teacher can do this better by permitting him to read 
some selection of his own choice than by requiring him 
to read the selection in his book, we can see no good 
reason why it should not be done. The aim is to get the 
pupil interested in reading and to get him to read as much 
as possible; it matters little what he reads just so it is 
good, wholesome literature. 

The same principle applies in all studies. It is not 



46 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

necessary that all pupils read the same history, for 
instance. Let them read that which appeals to them, 
for, by so doing, the teacher will best create in them a 
love for historical knowledge and stimulate them to read 
widely in history. If we would acquaint the pupil with 
the essential facts of history, the poorest way in the world 
to do so is to tie him down to the cold formality of a 
textbook. 

The next stage in the educational progress comes when 
the pupil becomes actively reflective. In this stage he does 
not use what he learns in the textbook as an end in itself ; 
he uses it as a basis for further inquiry. He does not 
accept without question what the textbook or the teacher 
says. He has his own ideas in literature, history, geog- 
raphy, and in mathematics. He takes the facts of litera- 
ture, history, etc., combines them with his own experiences, 
and causes them to be real knowledge. 

In our schools there is entirely too little time devoted 
to the second step in the educational process. Knowl- 
edge is acquired and soon passes out of the mind because 
it is not organized. The lessons, as a rule, are so long 
that the pupil has all he can do to make a cursory review 
of their contents; he has no time to reflect on what he 
reads and to organize it into a complete whole. We are 
moving at such a terrific rate in every phase of life that 
we have no time for calm reflection. The masses accept 
blindly what the few set before them, or, if they do not 
accept it blindly, it is, as a rule, a blind rejection. They 
do not know why they accept or reject certain things. 
Our social progress is the result of the thinking of a few 
men. The average person pushes the button and expects 
the thing to happen, and he is little concerned as to why 
it happens. The automobile, the telegraph, the tele- 
phone, and the thousands of other inventions that make 



Self-Activity in Education 47 

life easy and pleasant for us are accepted as a matter of 
course. The average man follows the leadership of his 
party without question. He accepts the foods others 
prepare for him without question; in fact, the life of the 
average man is a questionless life, and more than likely 
this is because he has formed early in life the habit of 
blindly following others. 

The highest stage of educational progress is reached 
when the pupil becomes self-active in the application of 
knowledge. Self-activity is necessary to the accumula- 
tion, and it is also necessary to its organization; but the 
highest stage is reached in educational progress only 
when the pupil becomes self -active in the application of 
knowledge. Here the pupil's individuality is brought 
into his work and all his faculties are S3nTimetrically 
developed. The last stage brings about in the pupil 
the proper coordination between power and attainment 
and makes him a "doer of the word and not a hearer 
only." Most people do not live up to their ideals because 
the power of applying what they learn has not been 
developed. This failure to do as well as we know has 
a weakening influence upon us, and most of us are not 
living up to our possibilities because we have failed to 
apply our lessons as we learn them. Our good impulses 
grow weaker and weaker if we fail to act on them, and 
our knowledge will mean less and less to us if we fail to 
put it into execution. Ideals will pass away unless there 
is an effort to live up to them. It is fatal for us to lose 
sight of the unity between knowing and doing; for, if 
the relationship is maintained, our ability to do grows 
less and less. This is, perhaps, one explanation of the 
weaknesses of poets and musicians, whose thoughts 
habitually pass away without being executed. 



48 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

NO EDUCATION WITHOUT SELF-ACTIVITY 

Without self -activity in school work the proper coor- 
dination of cerebral functions cannot be maintained. If 
the pupil does not enter into his work with his whole 
soul, some of his faculties will be used to the exclusion 
of others, and there will not be symmetrical growth of 
his whole being. This, perhaps, explains the difference 
between the city and the country boy. The country 
boy, having no one to direct him, takes the initiative 
in his work and thus develops himself all around; while 
the city boy has no such opportunities, hence his develop- 
ment is one-sided. His receptive faculties are used and 
his executive faculties are neglected. This is why the 
city boy stands no chance when he comes into competi- 
tion with the boy from the country, and it is not a mere 
happen-so that the great majority of our great men come 
from the country. The country boy finds his own prob- 
lems, he studies those things that are vital to him, those 
things that are suited to his stage of development, he 
brings into action all his faculties ; the result is a complete 
development of all his powers. 

Self -activity is indispensable in every stage of educa- 
tional progress. The child will not enter fully into his 
work unless he is self-active, and work that is perfunc- 
torily done will not result in habit. The weakness of 
the school to-day is that i't does not enlist all the child's 
powers; it does not bring all of them into his work, and 
the great task of the teacher is to arouse self-activity. 
She must make the inspiration for his work come from 
within. The pupil must become interested in his work 
for the work's sake, just as he is interested in his play. 
Grades, reports, a desire to please parents, teachers, and 
others, or to prepare for college, may enlist a part of the 
pupil's facilities and lead him to learn his lessons in a 



Self-Activity in Education 4g 

perfunctory manner, but these things will not bring all 
of him into his work. These things will not cause him 
to feel that "hot fever of unrest" which will give him no 
peace unless he is at work on his chosen task. 

It will doubtless never be possible to make the pupil 
self-active in all his school work. There are certain 
preliminaries that will remain drudgery to him and not 
enlist his powers, because his vision of the beauty of the 
fields beyond are not enough to lure him on. Maybe 
we shall never be able to make him self-active in learning 
the mechanics of reading, the multiplication table, the 
table of weights and measures, spelling, the correct forms 
of composition, etc. But, even if this be true, let us not 
deceive ourselves into thinking that the child is being 
educated when he mechanically masters these things. 
He must learn them with self -activity, if he can be induced 
to do so; if not, then mechanically, for there can be no 
self -activity beyond unless they are mastered. If learned 
mechanically, these things are not a part of the child's 
education; they are but a foundation upon which his 
education is to be erected. If the child's self-activity 
is not aroused, he will never be educated. He may 
mechanically learn many things, but these things will 
not be a part of him, and he will ever remain a mere 
machine. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. The relation of self -activity to a varied program of studies. 

2. Dickens' conception of education. 

3. The junior high school as a means of motivating school work. 

4. Educational methods of the kindergarten which may be 
carried over to the primary and elementary school. 

5. " Ciceronianism " in the schools of to-day. 



50 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

Further Readings 

Fisher, Dorothy C. A Montessori Mother. Henry Holt & Co. 
Hughes, James L. Dickens as an Educator. D. Appleton & Co. 

. FroeheVs Educational Laws, pp. 84-120. D. Appleton 

& Co. 
Montessori, Maria. The Montessori Method. F. A. Stokes Co. 
Pearson, Francis B. The Vitalized School. Macmillan. 



CHAPTER IV 
PLAY AS A FACTOR IN THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN 

IT HAS been said by those who are in a position to 
know, that the child learns more during his first 
six years than during all the rest of his life. If this be 
true — and we have every reason to believe that it is 
not far from the truth — there must be some condition 
during these early years especially conducive to educa- 
tional growth. Those who have made a study of con- 
ditions believe that the growth of the child during this 
period is due to his being brought into direct contact 
with things in his play. This same growth does not 
continue after the child starts to school, because he is 
taken away from things and made to study books. The 
reason why the little child is so interested in his school 
work for the first few years of his school life is because 
the study of books is novel to him and brings into use 
his play ideas. However, by the end of the third year, 
he has become so dominated by the book idea and the 
dull routine of the school that he loses interest in his 
work, which from, that time on becomes mere drudgery 
to him. 

During these early years the child not only gains an 
accurate knowledge of his environment, but he gains 
control of his body and mind and acquires accuracy 
and precision in his movements. He learns to judge 
distances of sights and sounds, and lays the foundation 
for all future intellectual and moral growth. The child's 
development during these years gives us some conception 
of the importance of play in his education. 

SI 



52 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

ORIGIN OP PLAY 

But why does the child like to play and why is play 
so important in his education? Why will not the study 
of books, or what we call regular school work, bring about 
the same development? Why does the boy delight in 
striking a ball with a bat and then in running with all 
his might around a baseball diamond? What does he 
gain by it and why will he endure hardship and privations 
in order that he may do it more perfectly? You hear 
grown people say that if boys and girls would take the 
same interest in their work that they do in their play, 
it would be much better for them. This is because grown 
people do not understand. They have passed the play 
age and they cannot understand what play means to 
the child. 

There have been several attempts to explain the play 
instincts of children. The first of these is the surplus- 
energy theory advanced by Herbert Spencer. He held 
that the nerve cells accumulate energy until they over- 
flow and that this overflow energy results in play. This 
theory does not, however, explain why the child plays 
just what he does. Why doesn't he expend his energy 
in work rather than in play? Why does he want to 
fight, hunt, fish, chase, play in the sand, make things, 
etc.? There is no denying that the child sometimes has 
a surplus of energy and that he expends at least a part 
of it in his play; but what about the child who plays 
to exhaustion long after all surplus energy is gone? As 
Joseph Lee says, **boys play on account of surplus energy 
in the same way that Raphael painted the Sistine 
Madonna because of surplus paint." 

Dr. Groos, a German scholar, held that play is an 
instinct that serves the purpose of education. The child 
does not play because he is yoxmg, but he is young in 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 53 

order that he may play, and in this play he prepares 
himself for life's activities. This is the theory of play 
that is held by almost all students of the subject. It 
was supplemented, however, by Dr. Hall of Clark Uni- 
versity, one of the greatest authorities on the subject 
in America, who held that play is a remnant of the early 
activities of the race. The instincts of the child are a 
result of what the race did for thousands and thousands 
of years. 

While history gives us an account of the race for only 
about five thousand years, scholars believe that man has 
been living on the earth for more than one million years. 
To accept this theory does no violence to the biblical 
account of the creation, and it is the only means of 
explaining the physical, mental, and moral constitution 
of the race. Geologists have demonstrated beyond any 
doubt that man has lived upon the earth for many thou- 
sands of years. We have an account of him for a little 
more than five thousand years; when we first get a 
glimpse of him he is just emerging from barbarism, and 
we know that he lived for many thousand years in a 
state of savagery. If it be true that man has been on 
the earth for a million years, for about 995,000 years 
he lived in a state of savagery in trees, caves, mountains, 
protecting himself from his enemies and wild animals 
by running, chasing, throwing, digging caves, making 
huts, bows and arrows, stone hammers, bone knives, etc. 
It was during this period that his reflexes were fixed and 
he became the creature that he is. 

Dr. Holmes says that "man is an omnibus in which all 
his ancestors ride." We to-day are what we are because 
our ancestors did what they did in the past. If the 
conditions of their lives had been different, we to-day 
shotdd be different from wha.t we are. If they had lived 



54 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

under different conditions, we should be different physi- 
cally, mentally, and morally. The boy loves to use a 
baseball bat because his ancestors, for ages, used clubs 
in fighting their enemies and wild animals; he likes to 
jimip because his ancestors for ages, in fleeing from wild 
animals, had to jump over fallen trees, small streams, 
and other things that were in their way; he likes to fight 
because his ancestors had to fight for protection against 
wild beasts. The things that children like to do are 
the things that their ancestors did for ages imtil their 
whole being became adapted to doing those things. 
Joseph Lee says: *'It is as natural for the child to htmt, 
fish, jump, chase, throw, as it is for the lamb to frolic 
on the hillside." It is by such activities that man has 
been made what he is, and it is only by such activities 
that he can be kept what he is and grow to greater 
perfection as the creature that he is. There have been 
many attempts to define play and to differentiate it from 
work, but all these attempts have been imsuccessful. 
Play is a remnant of the activities of our ancestors. 
We call them play, not because they are easy and require 
no effort, but because we delight in them, and we delight 
in them because they are in harmony with owi nature. 
It is because play activities are no longer necessary to 
the protection of life and the acquisition of a livelihood 
that grown people do not see the seriousness of them. 
But, in reality, play is even more serious to the child 
than work is to the man. In it he is building himself 
up physically, mentally, and morally. It was in what 
we call play activities that man was made what he is, 
and it is only by such activities that he will continue 
to be what he is. When your trusty typewriter gets 
out of repair and you want to have it adjusted, the place 
for you to send it is to the factory where it was made. 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 55 

The makers know best how to adjust its parts and to 
give it the best possible action. So when we want to 
adjust the growing child to the conditions around him, 
the best place to send him is to the factory where he 
was made, and that factory is his play. This is the 
important point for us to get here: the serious work 
of the ancestor has become the play of the child ; through 
that work the ancestor became what he was physically, 
mentally, and morally. 

Indeed, play has so long been misunderstood that the 
word "play" does not convey to the adult mind the 
proper conception of the activities of the child. The 
adult does not regard the child's play as anything serious. 
In fact, when we want to say that a thing lacks impor- 
tance, we say that it is ** child's play." But we must 
revise our conceptions along this line. The activities of 
the child are important; they are serious, and no one 
can closely observe children in their play without being 
impressed with this fact. The child is more in earnest 
in his play than many men are in their regular work. 
See the boy in the ball game; he is in the center field; 
a ball is knocked over the second baseman to him. Does 
he display any lack of seriousness when he gets the ball 
and in a moment must make up his mind where to put 
it? Did you ever see men more in earnest than a ball 
team of small boys lined up against a team of about 
the same strength? Did you ever see more earnestness 
than is displayed by the little six-year-old girl playing 
with her dolls, or the boy of five playing in a sand bed? 
Seriousness is one of the chief characteristics of the play 
of children. They enter into it heartily, and this is why 
it has for them such great educational value. 



56 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

MANY MODERN ACTIVITIES DRUDGERY 

As a result of our civilization, man is engaged in many 
kinds of work not in harmony with his instincts. He no 
longer engages in personal combat with his fellows except 
on rare occasions ; the day of the hunt is about over, and 
there is little opportunity given him in modem life for 
running, jumping, chasing, etc. Instead of being a 
maker of things, he is a tender of a machine which does 
the work. It is not much of a satisfaction to his fighting 
instincts to have to lie in a trench and, perhaps, to be 
shot in the head when he is least expecting it and by 
somebody against whom he has no grievance. Much of 
man's work to-day is what we call drudgery — work that 
is not in harmony with his instincts. Such work tears 
down rather than builds up. It is like putting a machine 
to some use for which it was not intended; soon its 
parts are out of the proper adjustment and the machine 
is worn out. If the man who tends a machine or who 
lies in a trench waiting to be shot by some unknown 
enemy does not have some opportunity outside of his 
regular work to satisfy his instincts, he is going to deteri- 
orate physically, mentally, and morally. This is why 
there is such a cry among workingmen for shorter hotu-s. 
They can't stand the drudgery, the tearing down, without 
some building up. This is why the question of recreation, 
of spending the leisure time, is becoming an important 
one with the coming of shorter hours. If the leisure 
time is the building-up time, it is very important how 
it is spent. 

Boys and girls in school are required to do much work 
that is not in harmony with their instincts. Such work 
is mere drudgery; it tears down the child physically, 
mentally, and morally, and if, like the workman, he is 
not given opportunity outside of his regular school work 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 57 

to build himself up through his natural activities, he 
will after a while become a weakling. This is why so 
many of our best school men are coming to the conclu- 
sion that if the school had charge of the child all the time 
he would be a weakling in body, mind, and soul. The 
boy who does not play will not grow. You may cram 
into his head all the learning in the world so that he will 
be a walking encyclopedia, you may teach him all the 
morals in the universe, and still he will be an imbecile 
mentally and morally, if he does not play. 

A survey of history will show us that those nations 
that have produced the greatest number of great men 
have been nations in which play was fostered. Greece 
produced more great men in the forty years during the 
age of Pericles than were ever produced in the same 
time by any nation, and Greece's educational system 
required every child to spend half of his time in play. 
The great men of England have been those who as boys 
took great interest in play. In America there are twice 
as many men from the ranks of the athletes in Who's 
Who as from the ranks of the Phi Beta Kappas. This is 
all strong argument in favor of at least making play a 
supplement to the regular work of the schools. 

If our present educational system, which consists, for 
the most part, in storing in the child's head the dry 
facts of textbooks, is not getting the desired results, 
it would be well for us to investigate and see what is the 
matter. It might be well for us to see whether our 
educational ideals are not wrong. Is education the acqui- 
sition of information or is it development? Even those 
who believe in the old-time educational regime will agree 
that the end of education is the development of the 
child physically, mentally, and morally. They pride 
themselves on their opposition to the "content studies," 



L 



$8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

but they fail to see that not only is education not the 
acquisition of knowledge, but that it is not acquired 
chiefly through a study of books. A man might know 
all the Greek and Latin, all the mathematics, be a walk- 
ing encyclopedia, and yet be uneducated. In fact, a 
man's being such is almost positive proof that he is not 
educated, for he has spent so much time and energy in 
the acquisition of knowledge that he has no time to make 
it effective. The educated man is the efficient man, the 
man who has control of his physical, mental, and moral 
faculties, and the college graduate who, like Briggs, has 
his knowledge packed so tightly in his mind that he can't 
get at anything he wants is far from efficient. What 
we want in education is the man who can use all the 
knowledge he possesses, the man who is master of all 
his resources. 

The school of the past made the child's school work 
drudgery because it confined him to the acquisition of 
information that he would need when he became a man. 
Childhood has been regarded as a useless period except 
as it stores up information useful to manhood. The 
child in school is required to solve the problems of the 
adult instead of the problems of childhood in which he 
is interested. When conditions are changing as rapidly 
as they are to-day, who knows but that these problems 
will no longer be the problems of the man when the 
child reaches manhood? Then these problems of the 
adult do not appeal to the child; he is not interested 
in them, and psychologists tell us that however long we 
are confined to tasks in which we are not interested 
they will not make an impression upon us. The child 
does not grow as a result of his school work unless he 
enters into it with his whole soul and is self-active in it. 
He is not going to be self -active in that which does not 



-. 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 5p 

appeal to him as satisfying a present need; hence we 
can do him but Httle good in an educational way when we 
confine him to the problems of adult life. We must let 
him study and do those things that satisfy his needs 
now, for by so doing we prepare him in the best possible 
way for the problems of adult life. We must get away 
from the conception of education as the acquisition of 
information. Information is only a by-product of edu- 
cation. The mind is not a cistern; it is a workshop in 
which things are made. It is not a storehouse; it is a 
factory. The best way for the mind to store up a fund 
of useful information is for us to make it a workshop. 
Information is not really acquired until the mind is 
aroused and becomes alert and active. 

PLAY BUILDS UP 

As we have said before, play develops every phase of 
the child's being and makes him the creature nature 
intended him to be. It is like the proper soil for the 
plant; it causes him to reach his ideal. Play causes the 
child to grow physically, mentally, and morally. 

I. Physically. Play gives the child the proper physical 
basis for his life, develops his reflexes, gives physical con- 
trol, and develops the bodily organs. Running, which is 
a part of almost all play, gives the best possible develop- 
ment to the heart and lungs. It sends good, rich blood 
to all parts of the body, builds up the torn-down tissues, 
and gives ability to resist disease. Play puts the child 
into the fresh air, and fresh air is the most perfect tonic 
for all the body. The way to get a good case of indi- 
gestion is to keep out of the fresh air, take no exercise, 
and worry over your work. The way to build up a good 
digestive apparatus is to go out into the fresh air, take 
plenty of exercise, and take your mind off your work. 



60 Present Day Tendencies in Education ^^ 

Worry impairs the health more quickly than an3rthing 
else we know, and the person who plays regularly in the 
fresh air will not worry. 

Play develops and strengthens the nervous system. 
The American people are getting to be the most nervous 
people in the world. Some one has said that if this 
state of affairs keeps on we shall all be in the insane 
asyltim within the next three hundred years. American- 
itis is another word for nervousness and irritability. 
The nervousness is due to the strenuousness of our lives 
and the lack of recreation through play. We are tearing 
down all the time, and never give natiire an opportunity 
to build up. We are not a playing people. We work 
too much and do not spend enough time in exercise in 
the fresh air. This nervousness may be charged up 
largely to our educational system, which confines the 
child to a life of drudgery in the study of things that do 
not interest him. Most parents and teachers seem will- 
ing to sacrifice everything if the child can be made to 
learn his lessons at school. They take their children 
away from their play, send them to school almost as 
soon as they can walk, and do all in their power to crush 
their lives out. They do not realize that there is some- 
thing more important to the child's future than the acqui- 
sition of information. 

Play not only develops the body, it renders it immune 
against disease. The person who plays in the open air 
will seldom be sick. Play is said to insure the greatest 
immunity against tuberculosis, pneumonia, grippe, and 
colds; it gives vitality to the body and helps it to throw 
off disease germs. Play gives endurance and strength 
to do the physical work that will be required in after- 
years. So many people have not the physical strength 
to do their work; they tire out easily. This is not true 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 6i 

of the man who plays. Being in harmony with his 
natural interests, the child enters into his play whole- 
heartedly and enthusiastically, and it gives him grace 
and symmetry. The Greeks were the best proportioned 
and the most perfect race physically the world has ever 
produced. This was because they placed so much 
emphasis on play in their educational system. 

2. Mentally. Play also gives the mind the exercise it 
requires. It is the natural tonic for the mental organs 
just as it is for the physical. It develops the mind much 
more effectively than does the regular school work, 
because the child enters into it more enthusiastically. 
He enters into it with his whole soul and becomes self- 
active. Play is the only kind of exercise into which the 
child will enter whole-heartedly, and it is, for this reason, 
the only kind that will cause his S3mimetrical develop- 
ment. When the child engages in any kind of exercise 
in which he is not interested, only one set of brain centers 
is active: but when he is interested in his work, all the 
centers are aroused, the brain is unified, and its sym- 
metrical development is brought about. 

Many people have a high mental efficiency for a few 
hours, but they cannot stand the test in which endurance 
is required. They have not developed the power of long- 
sustained mental effort. In the child's study, his mind 
flits from thing to thing, but this is not true in his play. 
The boy in the baseball or football game has the best 
possible opportunity for developing the power of con- 
centration. 

Play also develops the judgment. In the school the 
pupil is taught to weigh argimients on both sides of a 
question and is cautioned to be conservative in rendering 
his judgment. This is all very well on some occasions; 
but in most cases decisions must be given "right off the 



.. 



62 Present Day Tendencies in Edttcation 

bat," as it were, when hesitation is fatal. When the 
boy in the center field gets a ball, he must decide in an 
instant whether to throw it to the first, second, or third 
base; he must decide in an instant which runner to put 
out. This requires quick judgment on his part, and, 
not as in his school work, much depends on his decision. 
The crowd cheers him if he makes a good play; it hisses 
if he makes a bad one. There is no place for **sissyism" 
in the baseball game. There is no teacher to say that 
Johnnie will do better next time. On the playground 
there is no next time; he must deliver the goods now. 
The boy soon learns this and he does his best to deliver 
them. Knowing that one must do what is expected of 
him is the greatest possible stimulus to the thinking 
faculties, and the boy who sleeps in his history recitation 
will be wide awake on the playground, when so much 
depends upon what he does. There he is mentally alert 
and every faculty is at its highest tension. 

3. Morally. Play not only gives physical and mental 
development, it is the chief source of moral strength. 
We may teach the child to do right, but he does not learn 
through our teaching. He learns through his own doing. 
In his play he forms his moral concepts. There his 
apperceptive centers for after-life are formed. There he 
gets his ideals. The race is what it is morally because 
of its early activities, and the best way for it to reach 
its ideal morally is for it to continue those activities. 
Where the man was made is the best place in which to 
keep him in repair. 

The lack of something to do is the cause of most of the 
immorality in the world. Play creates the habit of 
industry. Some one has said that the boy who does 
not play is father to the man without a job. The boy 
who plays most on the outside of school will, as a rule, 
do the best work in the school. 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 63 

Play develops the spirit of sportsmanship, which urges 
the boy to do his best to win, but, if he cannot, to take 
his defeat magnanimously. It tells him to do his best 
even though the odds are against him, and if defeat 
comes, to do his best to win the next time. 

Play develops a sense of justice, honesty, and obedience 
to law. It eliminates from the child's mind the idea 
that might makes right, and teaches him to play accord- 
ing to the rules of the game and treat even the smallest 
player with the same consideration that he gives the 
largest one. When the child gets the idea on the play- 
ground that he should play according to rules, he carries 
these same ideas into business and plays according to 
the rules there. The boy who learns to respect the laws 
of the playground learns at the same time to respect 
the laws of his state. It might be said that the boy will 
learn this lesson of obedience in his regular school work, 
but experience has proved to us that such is not the case. 
Lawlessness in this country is increasing at a very rapid 
rate, and many think that this is due to the increased 
lack of respect for the laws of the school. The school 
is an absolute monarchy where the teacher's word is law. 
The teacher is on one side; the pupils are on the other; 
and it is a question which side will win. The pupil, 
under such conditions, will naturally come to the con- 
clusion that it is to his interest to violate the law when- 
ever he can. The playground, however, is a democracy 
where the law is in harmony with the child's needs; he 
learns to obey it because he feels that it is his law; he 
wants to obey, he does obey, and thus he forms the habit 
of obedience. 

There are many moral qualities which the playground 
develops. In fact, a properly conducted playground will 
develop every phase of the child's moral life. Play 



64 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

satisfies the deepest longings of the child's moral life and 
is in harmony with his moral no less than it is with 
his physical and mental nature. 

EDUCATIONAL CONSERVATISM 

Then, if play is so important in the education of children, 
should it not have a more prominent place in our educa- 
tional system than it has at present? When it means 
so much to the child physically, mentally, and morally, 
should it not have at least as much of the child's time 
as is devoted to one of his studies? Many of our leading 
educators are beginning to think so, and in the more 
progressive schools of the country provision is made for 
the child's play just as for his regular school studies. 
In fact, some schools have gone much farther than this, 
and play is given as large a place in the school program 
as all the other activities combined. 

In the Gary schools, the child devotes half his time to 
play, and Superintendent Wirt says that the pupils gain 
rather than lose by it. The graduates of the Gary schools 
are, as a rule, given advanced standing when they go 
to higher institutions. In an investigation of twenty 
thousand school children in New York City it was found 
that those who had been on half time had made con- 
siderably better progress than those who had been on 
full time. Joseph Lee says that our present educational 
methods teach the child how to do one hour's work in 
five hoiirs' time. Dr. Hutchinson says that "a child 
can read over in thirty hours all that the school requires 
him to master in three thousand hours. It keeps him 
one hundred hours on work that he could do in one 
hour." Dr. Eliot says that a normal eighth-grader 
could master in six weeks all the ntimber work he has 
mastered in his previous years in school. Colonel Parker 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 65 

said that if you would give him a normal child fourteen 
years old who had never been to school, he would put 
him through the high school in four years. We all know 
that the boy from the country who has been to school 
but very little can enter the high school and outstrip the 
city boy who has been in school all his life. He may 
not know as much as the city boy, but he is more alert 
mentally. Most of our great men attended school only 
three or four months in the year. All this seems to prove 
that our children are getting too much schooling of the 
kind we are giving them. Does it not prove that much 
that we are worrying over teaching the child he would 
learn at the proper time? The trouble is that we are 
trying to get him to learn these things when he is not 
ready for them. Like Dr. Blimber's hothouse, our 
schools are trying to force the boys and girls to bloom 
out of season. If we would let the child grow physically, 
mentally, and morally, in his natural way, he would 
acquire the necessary information at the proper season 
without effort. In oiu: school work we have sinned 
greatly against the child by trying to force him. The 
teachers say, "Bring him on"; the parents say, "Bring 
him on," and, as a result, he has been brought on in 
great fashion. The hothouse method may cram into 
the child's head the customary quantimi of information 
and make father and mother proud of his learning; but 
such a method will not develop the physical strength 
that is necessary to the fullest life; it will not develop 
mental alertness, and it is destructive of the child's finer 
sensibilities. The plant that is pushed and made to bloom 
out of season pays the price later on in retarded growth, 
and the child that is robbed of his childhood and the play 
life that goes with it will likewise pay the price in arrested 
development. If the Dr. Blimbers who manage the 



66 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

hothouses had to pay the price for such a crime against 
childhood, no one would seriously object; but the child 
must pay the price himself in a stunted life physically, 
mentally, and morally, and the Dr. Blimbers pass before 
the world as great educators. The greatest crime of the 
age is the one the schools are committing against the 
lives of little children in tying them down to the cold 
formality of textbooks and robbing them of the oppor- 
tunities of growth that nature has provided for them 
through play. 

We are not advocating the elimination of the school 
studies. They have their place in the education of chil- 
dren. But we do not believe that the child should be 
required in his school work to solve the problems of the 
adult and to neglect the problems that appeal to him. 
His school studies should be adapted to his needs as a 
child so that he will bring his play spirit into them and 
enter into them with that enthusiasm necessary to master- 
ing them. Play should be given a prominent place in 
the school program, and the opportunities it offers should 
be used to their limit to bring about the child's complete 
an(J harmonious development. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Play in the education of the Greeks and Romans. 

2. Play in the education of the French, English, and Germans. 

3. The playground movement in America. 

4. Physical training in its relation to playgroimd and recreation 
activities. 

5. Play in its relation to physical, mental, and moral training. 

Further Readings 

Curtis, Henry S. Education hrough Play. Macmillan. 

. The Practical Conduct of Play. Macmillan. 

Hughes, James L. FroeheVs Educational Laws. D. Appleton & Co. 



Play as a Factor in the Education of Children 6y 

Hall, G. Stanley. Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, 

pp. 73-119. D. Appleton & Co. 
Lee, Joseph. Play in Education. Macmillan. 
Strayer and Norsworthy. How to Teach, pp. 138-149. Macmillan, 
Tanner, Amy Eliza. The Child. Rand McNally & Co. 



CHAPTER V 
FROEBEL'S CONCEPTION OF UNITY 

ACCORDING to Froebel, all things have been 
created in one ** universal, interdependent, inter- 
influencing, ever-progressive harmony." **In all things 
there lives and reigns an eternal law." There is not 
one law for the inorganic kingdom, another for the 
organic, and still another for the spiritual; but one law 
pervades the whole. This thought is beautifully devel- 
oped in Dnmmiond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 
in which he shows that one law pervades the whole 
creation. If our minds could grasp the creation in its 
entirety, we should find that there is no conflict either 
in the various elements of the creation or in physical, 
social, or spiritual phenomena. When we look at one 
part of the creation, we sometimes think that we find 
it out of harmony with the other parts ; but such a seem- 
ing lack of harmony would disappear if our minds were 
large enough to grasp the whole. There is in it all a 
living unity, a complete harmony, because it all sprang 
from one Being. 

We cannot grasp this conception of the creation unless 
we are willing to regard all things as having originated 
from one divine mind and to believe that that mind 
planned all things to work in harmony. Wenac not 
grasp this beautiful conception of an all-pervading har- 
mony of things if we believe that one mind planned all 
things and then left them to their own course. Such a 
creation would not be the product of one mind, but of 
a multitude of minds. In such a case there would be 
no harmony among the various phenomena. Element 

68 




FroeheVs Conception of Unity 6g 

would be battling against element; every man would be 
arrayed against his neighbor, and the good of the whole 
world would not at all coincide with the good of the several 
parts. 

The unity between individualism and socialism is a 
good example of the harmony that exists between seem- 
ingly contradictory terms. On first thought, it would 
seem that the two conceptions are diametrically opposed 
to each other; but a closer investigation of individual 
and social welfare makes it evident that there is no such 
conflict and that both are governed by the same law. 
What is really best for the individual is also best for 
society. The individual cannot, in the long run, bring 
the best to himself by his own personal aggrandizement; 
but "he is greatest who is the servant of all." "He that 
would save his life must lose it." Eventually, by seeking 
to forget self and to give self in a service of love to others, 
one brings the greatest good to himself. When Jesus 
said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," he set 
forth one of the fundamental laws of himian develop- 
ment. The man who is self -centered will not grow. 
Selfishness will not only impede growth; it will dry up 
the very fountains of life. One of the most pathetic 
sights in the world is the man who disregards the welfare 
of his fellows and seeks to take all things to himself. 
The highest individual good is also the highest social 
good. On the other hand, he who does most for himself 
in the highest and noblest sense of that term does most 
for his fellows. 

The same unity is found in all things — in heat and cold; 
in pain and pleasure, and even in good and evil. What we 
now regard as evil is the highest good to the mind which 
grasps the relationship of all things. There are not two 
conflicting minds in the universe ; one mind is sovereign. 



70 Present Bay Tendencies in Education 

Not only is this harmony universal, but it is inter- 
dependent; all things are dependent on all other things. 
As between the organs of the human body, so there is a 
bond of sjmipathy between the parts of the whole : when 
one gets out of order, the other organs suffer. Not only 
this; all things are inter-influencing. Each part of the 
universe is influencing every other part. The organic 
world influences the inorganic, and the two influence the 
spiritual. The highest conception reached by Froebel 
was that this harmony is ever-progressive. It is not a 
static harmony, but it is one that is constantly tending 
toward perfection. Thus Froebel does not sympathize 
at all with the pessimist. He is the king of optimists. 
He would calm the fears of those who feel that the world 
is tending toward chaos. It is advancing from chaos to 
a complete unity with the mind that created all things 
in harmony. 

"The business of the school," says Froebel, "is not so 
much to teach and communicate a multiplicity of things 
as to give prominence to the ever-living unity that is in 
all things." In other words, the essential business of 
the school is not to acomiulate isolated facts, but to 
emphasize the relationship that exists between those 
facts and the harmony that exists in all things. 

APPERCEPTIVE BASIS IN THE PUPIL 

Not only is it the business of the school to emphasize 
the relationship that exists between things, but the teacher 
in her daily work must never lose sight of this harmony. 
There must be an inner connection between the pupil 
and what he studies; there must be an affinity between 
the two. There must be in the child's past experience 
something related to the thing he would learn. Thus we 
see the importance of the teacher's having a clear con- 



FroeheVs Conception of Unity 71 

ception of the doctrine of apperception and of her observ- 
ing it in her daily work. The doctrine is one of those 
fundamental in modem education. It is not only impor- 
tant that the teacher clearly understand it and observe 
it in her daily work, but there must be a basis laid at 
home, before the child comes to school, for his future 
mental and moral development. 

The lessons taken up by the child in school presuppose 
certain experiences before he entered school; if he has 
not had those experiences, he cannot grasp the lesson. 
Unless he has in his mind some facts in common with 
the lesson he is to learn, he cannot assimilate that lesson. 
It will mean nothing to him. In other words, his mental 
digestive organs must be able to digest the mental food 
that is taken in. Physiologists tell us that each kind 
of food requires a certain kind of an enzyme to digest it, 
and that if a food is taken into the digestive organs 
before the proper enzyme appears, it will remain in the 
stomach undigested and, after forming poisonous bacteria, 
will be absorbed into the system, causing all kinds of 
physical ailments. The results that follow the taking 
of mental food into the mental digestive organs before 
the proper enzyme appears is equally harmful and is the 
cause of most of the mental diseases. There are thou- 
sands of people in the world far below the proper standards 
in efficiency physically because they did not understand 
or failed to observe the laws of physical dietetics, and 
there are, also, many thousands of men and women far 
below the proper standards in mental and moral efficiency 
because they did not observe the law of mental and moral 
dietetics. 

It is extremely important that the teacher observe the 
doctrine of apperception in her daily work. It is impor- 
tant that she find out what the child knows and what 



J2 Present Day Tendencies in Rducation 

his past experiences have been before she tindertakes to 
instruct him. When she assigns a lesson, she should be 
sure that the apperceptive basis necessary to the learning 
of that lesson has been laid. She should for this reason 
never tell the child to take the next five pages, the next 
chapter, or the next topic, unless she knows that the 
proper enzyme for the digestion of that food has appeared 
in the child's mental digestive organs. 

The doctrine of apperception holds as true for the moral 
as for the mental. It is a crime to cram into the child's 
mind religious creeds and dogmas that he cannot under- 
stand. Such a method is just as contrary to nature as 
it would be for the little child to take into his stomach 
a piece of meat he cannot digest, just because he might 
need later in life the food elements that meat contains. 
We hear people talk about the good that they have 
received from Scripture they memorized in their childhood, 
but there is always a doubt in our minds as to the good 
to be derived from such a course of training. We have 
always thought that such persons would have been much 
stronger morally if they had devoted their time to the 
cultivation of a basis for their moral growth. The child 
needs to be in an atmosphere of love and sympathy, to 
be associated with the good and true in real life, literatiu-e, 
and biography, and to have his poetic fancies and artistic 
instincts developed. The learning of moral precepts and 
reHgious dogmas is no substitute for this. 

CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, AND MANHOOD 

In the education of the child we must never lose sight 
of the fact that there is a very intimate connection between 
his childhood, youth, and manhood. In each stage we 
are to teach him and let him do what that stage calls 
for and cultivate his apperceptive centers so that he will 



FroeheVs Conception of Unity /j 

be ready for the next stage when he conies to it. One 
of the chief characteristics of the new education is the 
emphasis placed on the present worth of the child. The 
old education placed its chief emphasis on preparation 
for manhood. It regarded the child as important only 
because after a while he would be a man. Everything 
was preparatory to manhood; but the new education 
says that by doing most for the child as he is now we 
make the best possible preparation for manhood. In all 
cases we are to satisfy the child's present needs. We 
are to teach him to read because he has in his life a felt 
need of knowing how to read. We are to give him num- 
bers only when he needs number relations in his every- 
day life. We are to give him language lessons only when 
he feels the need of a better means of expressing his 
ideas. We are to give him nothing merely because of a 
need that may arise in the future. We are to give him 
nothing merely because it is customary for educated 
people to know or do such things. All our efforts are 
to be devoted to satisfying present needs. 

In each stage the apperceptive basis is to be prepared 
for the next stage. In his childhood we are to bring him 
in contact with flowers and plants and create in him a 
love for these things preparatory to his study of botany 
later. If he takes up the study of botany without having 
this love for flowers and plants first cultivated in his 
heart, he will get nothing from it but a lot of dry facts 
that will be meaningless to him. He will think he has 
something when he has not. In the same way zoology 
is to be preceded by a love for animal life. Little chil- 
dren are not to study nature from ~ books ; they are to 
come into contact with its living forms and learn thus 
to appreciate its beauties. Then they will be prepared 
to study it scientifically. There is no more valueless 



J 4 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

study imaginable than botany or zoology without this 
apperceptive basis having been formed. There is no 
more valueless study than formal grammar before the 
child has learned to appreciate language. The culti- 
vation in the heart of the child of an appreciation of 
language is the task of the first years of school life. 

PHYSICAL, MENTAL, AND MORAL 

The unity of the physical, mental, and moral is a very 
real one, and must be kept in mind by the teacher. The 
three are one ; they are not independent of one another, as 
is often thought, but they react upon one another in a 
very vital manner. 

This is especially true with reference to the physical 
and mental. The two are not only related, but, in a very 
real sense, they may be said to be one. The physical 
is the organ of the mental. The brain and the nerves 
are the instruments of the mind. Dr. Hall says that 
"the cortical centers for the voluntary muscles extend 
over most of the lateral psychic zones of the brain, and 
muscle culture is brain building." Thus, there is a more 
intimate relation between physical and mental growth 
than we have heretofore dreamed of. The physical and 
the mental react on each other more intimately than we 
have thought. Every movement of the muscles affects 
us mentally, and, vice versa, every mental act affects 
muscular movement. Angelo Mosso, the great Italian 
specialist, says that the relation of mentality to move- 
ment is very close. The most intelligent animals are 
those that have the freest use of their limbs. The hand 
of the intelligent person shows intelligence in its every 
movement, while the hands of the feeble-minded show 
equally a lack of intelligence. It is so true that movement 
is intimately related to mentality that the feeble-minded 



FroebeVs Conception of Unity 75 

are taught through the use of their hands. Their brain 
centers are strengthened through muscular activity. 

The relation between the physical and moral is also 
very close. Dr. Hall says, again, that "the muscles are 
the vehicles of habituation, imitation, obedience, char- 
acter, and even of manners and customs." We are what 
we are morally or in character because our muscles have 
formed the habit of responding in a certain way to nerve 
centers that have got into the habit of discharging in a 
certain way. The muscles are the organs of the will, 
and it is extremely important, for this reason, that we 
maintain the proper coordination between the sensory 
and the motor nerve centers. If we do not maintain 
this coordination, we weaken down both sensory and 
motor activity, and threaten the foundation of character. 
The man who is always taking in good ideas without 
acting upon them, always having good impulses without 
carrying them out, will soon cease to have either good 
ideas or good impulses. 

Then there is another evidence of the relation between 
the physical and the moral in that the morally weak 
most frequently are also physically weak. The bad boy 
at school is, in the great majority of cases, physically 
defective. Ninety per cent of the boys in the Boys' 
Training School (the state reformatory for boys) in 
Oklahoma are physically defective. Investigation has 
shown that the great majority of the inmates of peni- 
tentiaries are defective physically; all of this goes to 
show that there is a very intimate relationship existing 
between the physical and the moral. 

The mental and moral also stand in a very close rela- 
tionship to each other. In fact, they cannot be separated. 
The man who is mentally well balanced is also morally 
developed. The first prerequisite of moral strength is 



^6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

correct ideas. One must have correct ideas before he 
has the right attitude toward things. It is not necessary 
that a man be educated to be moral; but it is necessary 
that he have right ideas. Indeed, our moral standards 
are the result of social thought ; whatever society thinks is 
right is morally right. It may not be in harmony with 
the eternal principles of truth, but it will be the moral 
standard accepted by society. 

FEELING, KNOWING, AND WILLING 

The unity of feeling, knowing, and willing is very 
important to the teacher. The emotional and the intel- 
lectual faculties are very vitally related to each other. 
Klnomng results in feeling, and, not only this, the feelings 
are very important factors in the acquisition of knowl- 
edge. The schoolroom in which there is enthusiasm will 
accomplish a far greater amount of work than the room 
where enthusiasm is lacking. In fact, it is extremely 
doubtful whether there can be effective work in a school- 
room where there is no enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is 
necessary to interest, interest to attention, and certainly 
there can be no learning without attention. Enthusiasm 
is as necessary to effective w^ork on the part of the teacher 
as fire is to the worker in metals, and there could be no 
more profitless undertaking than trying to teach a room 
full of little children without first arousing their enthu- 
siasm for their work. The cold-hearted teacher may 
be able to cram some facts into the minds of her 
pupils, but she will not get them to assimilate these facts 
into mental and moral fiber. Enthusiasm is as necessary 
to the proper digestion of mental food as the enzyme is 
to the digestion of physical food. 

Not only is feeling necessary to knowing, but knowing 
should result in feeling. The man who knows a thing, 



FroeheVs Conception of Unity yy 

and knows that he knows it, is a master. This cannot be 
said of the man who knows a thing without knowing that 
he knows it. This being aware of our accompHshments, 
the feeling that flows from it, is what makes us masters. 
It makes no difference how phlegmatic one is, he feels the 
spirit of conquest when he masters a difficult problem. 

Then the feelings are necessary to the fullest develop- 
ment of character. Love, sympathy, reverence, and all 
those cardinal elements of Christian character have their 
taproot in the emotional life, and the man or woman 
lacking in the proper development of these emotions 
will also be found lacking in these virtues. The feelings 
are at the base of the will, and the person of an enthusi- 
astic, emotional temperament is most likely to have his 
will power developed to the highest degree. He may 
make mistakes in judgment, but he will not be afraid 
to act. Hence we can see that a symmetrical character 
has all three faculties developed; one is necessary to 
the complete development and functioning of the other, 
and there is a complete unity among them. 

RECEPTIVE, REFLECTIVE, AND EXECUTIVE FACULTIES 

The most fundamental unity discussed by Froebel and 
the one that has had most influence on modem educational 
thought is that of the receptive, the reflective, and the 
executive faculties. It takes the three to complete the 
learning process. The cycle is not complete until the 
knowledge has been acquired, organized, and applied. 
In the old education we emphasized merely the acqui- 
sition of knowledge and never thought either of organizing 
or of applying it. We emphasized textbook work, and 
the whole aim was to get the pupil to master the text- 
book. We lost sight entirely of the unity in these three 
steps in the educational process. 



'/8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

The most serious defect in the educational system 
of the past was its lack of thoroughness. • Students 
were rushed over a prescribed educational field in a 
certain time and were expected to get into their heads 
as best they could the information included in that 
field. All the emphasis was placed on the acquisition 
of knowledge, and the pupil had to go so fast to get over 
the field in the prescribed time that he had no time to 
organize his knowledge; hence it soon passed out of his 
mind. There is nothing more pathetic than the modem 
graduate who has been chased around our educational 
race course a certain ntunber of times and made to feel 
that he is educated. He has studied English four years, 
history four years; he has read Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, 
and has caught a glimpse of the mysteries of graphs, the 
binomial theory, and logarithms; but he has no thorough 
knowledge of English literature; he knows the names of 
some authors and, maybe, he remembers some of the 
things they wrote, but he is not able to talk about their 
writings in an intelligent manner and to show you that 
he has made these writings a part of himself. He has 
read ancient, medieval, and modem history, but he has 
only a hazy grasp of it. He can give a few facts here 
and there; but he does not understand the great cause- 
and-effect side of history. His knowledge of algebra and 
Latin lacks thoroughness. The trouble with his work 
is that it lacks organization. Knowledge acquired and 
not organized soon passes out of the mind. 

Then knowledge may be organized and still not be 
real knowledge. It does not become a part of one until 
it is applied. Applied knowledge is the only real knowl- 
edge. It is the only knowledge that results in a complete 
coordination of all our faculties. Our schools have so 
long been emphasizing the accumulation of knowledge. 



FroeheVs Conception of Unity yg 

making no effort to apply it, that the proper coordination 
of the receptive and executive faculties has been largely 
lost. Most of us are like the lady who wept over the 
sufferings of the fictitious character in the play, while her 
coachman was freezing to death on her cab outside 
the theater. We should not permit ourselves to acquire 
information that we do not use. Knowledge was never 
intended to be stored, but to be used as it is accumu- 
lated. Like the manna collected by the ancient Israelites, 
it is to be collected as we need it, and the results 
of our going on, year after year, accumulating knowl- 
edge that was never used has been most demoralizing. 
Character is not in any sense of the term a result of the 
accimiulation of knowledge. The accumulation of knowl- 
edge has nothing to do with growth. Growth is a re- 
sult of the assimilation of that knowledge that comes 
with its application. The world is full of mental and 
moral dyspeptics — those who have taken into their men- 
tal and moral digestive organs more food than they can 
digest. Such a process is not productive, but destructive, 
of character. The man of character is the one who lives 
up to his limit every day, who uses all the knowledge 
he has in store. 

There is a certain fascination about knowing things 
just for the sake of knowing them; it tickles our fancy 
to have our neighbors call us well read, well informed, 
educated, but we pay a dear price in character for such 
compliments. Ice cream, certain candies, and fancy 
foods are also pleasing to our tastes and often we enjoy 
eating them, but we pay a dear price for such pleasures. 
We should take into our bodies such foods as these bodies 
need, and at the time they need them. We should not 
take foods just because they are pleasing to our tastes, 
nor because we may need them after awhile. So we should 



8o Present Day Tendencies in Edttcation 

take into our mental and moral digestive organs just 
such food as these organs need, and as they need it. 
We should not try to store it away for future use. We 
should apply our knowledge as we acquire it and close 
up the gap between knowing and willing. We should 
complete the unity of the receptive, reflective, and execu- 
tive faculties. 

These are some of the unities stressed by Froebel. 
With him, the law of unity is the fundamental law of 
education. His whole system of educational philosophy 
is based on this law, and we cannot understand him unless 
we grasp his conception of unity. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. The relation of the physical to mental and moral development. 

2. The cultivation of the emotions as a factor in education. 

3. Froebel's conception of individuality and self-expression. 

4. The kindergarten as Froebel saw it. 

5. What Froebel contributed to modem education. 

Further Readings 

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. Macmillan. 

. Moral Principles in Education. Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Froebel, Friedrich. Education of Man. D. Appleton & Co. 

Hughes, James L. Dickens as an Educator, pp. 15-28. D. Apple- 
ton & Co. 

. Froebel's Educational Laws, pp. 222-247 and pp. 1-36, 

D. Appleton & Co. 

Moore, Ernest C. What Is Education? Ginn & Co. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND WHAT IT 
MEANS IN EDUCATION 

TWO young men were talking together. One was 
of a literary turn of mind and was very much 
interested in a book of fiction he had just completed, 
recounting some scenes among the early settlers in the 
Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri when the red man 
still occupied that country. The writer told his friend 
how he had gathered the material for the book and under 
what difficulties he had written it. He then told its 
story from beginning to end. When he had finished he 
asked his friend if he had ever written a book, and much 
to his surprise the friend replied, "Yes, I am writing 
one now. I have been laboring for about twenty-five 
years gathering the material and writing a book that is 
to me the most interesting book in all the world. But 
even now, with all the time I have put on it, it is far 
from what I would have it be. In spite of all I can do, 
much goes into it that I wish was not there; but, you 
know, it seems so hard to change a part of it after it has 
been written. The words, the sentences, the paragraphs, 
the chapters, want to remain just as I first wrote them. 
This is not true of the book you have told me about. 
You can rewrite and change any part of it whenever you 
desire, but when my book is written, it is written. The 
book that I am writing is the book of life." 

This book of life is the book each one of us is engaged 
in writing from the day of his birth until the day of his 
death. It is not written for us by another. It does not 
just happen to be what it is, but we are from day to day 

8i 



82 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

writing with our own hands what is therein contained, 
and what we write is written more indeHbly than if it 
had been wTitten on tablets of clay or stone. A few 
months ago, around the ruins of ancient Nineveh, there 
were found clay tablets that had been written more than 
six thousand years ago, and they were as legible as they 
were when they were first written. In the tombs of 
the ancient Egyptian kings there are frequently found 
inscriptions written more than five thousand years ago. 
It seems wonderful to us that the thoughts of a man 
could be preserved and made plain to his descendants who 
lived six thousand years after his death. But much 
more wonderful is the fact that in the nervous systems 
of these ancient monarchs is a record of their deeds more 
accurate and far more truthful than those written on 
clay or stone tablets. This is the book of life which now 
lies concealed from human eyes, a record written, as it 
were, in God's invisible ink, but the record will be revealed 
to all when God makes known his plan for making visible 
that which now is invisible. 

As the master sings or plays into the receiving horn 
of the phonograph, a record is made of what he sings or 
plays. This record can be reproduced in about its 
original tones. This cylinder can be laid aside for a 
thousand years, perhaps, and then be made to give off 
as sweet a melody as on the day it was made. However, 
as I think of the wonders of the phonograph and its 
power to preserve the sounds of the human voice and of 
the most perfect musical instruments known to man, I 
realize that its wonders are not to be compared to the 
records that each one of us is making of the deeds of 
his life — a record that will be perfectly preserved, not 
in some mysterious book kept in some mysterious land, 
but in our own nervous systems; and I imagine that, on 



The Central Nervotts System 8j 

the day when all secrets are revealed, the record we have 
been writing will be placed on God's wonderful phono- 
graph, and every thought we have had and every deed 
we have done will be reproduced in perfect exactness. 

It has been said that when one stirs a pail of water 
even with the finest feather its molecules are made to 
take a new arrangement, and not a single one occupies 
the space it did before. I raise my arm and lower it 
again to its original position. So far as I can see, every- 
thing is as it was before; but if my vision were more 
penetrating than it is, I could clearly see that this move- 
ment caused a rearrangement of certain molecules in my 
nerve cells and made it impossible for me to be what I 
was before. Every thought, every act, changes me, and 
after such a thought or act I can never be quite what I 
was before. 

The nervous system is said to be composed of about 
three thousand million nerve cells or neurones which vary 
in length from a very small fraction of an inch to several 
inches. These nerve cells have the power of sending out 
messages, which tends to unite them into one interrelated 
mass. Now this nerve fiber is the most plastic substance 
that we know anything about, and it is extremely sensitive 
to even the most delicate nerve currents, and also to 
heat and cold, as those of us who have had the toothache 
can testify. We do not know how the nerve currents 
act upon it, whether the change is chemical or electrical, 
but we do know that it is modified by every thought- 
current that passes over it or through it. We know also 
that every thought-current that passes over these nerve 
cells leaves such an impression that, like phonographic 
records, it can be reproduced. We know that the more 
frequently thought passes over a channel, the deeper that 
channel becomes; and the more easily the thought is 



84 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

reproduced, the more frequently an act is performed or 
an attitude taken, the more easily it is repeated. This 
is what we call the law of habit. When thought-force 
which results in an act or an attitude passes over a path- 
way of nerve cells once, it tends to pass that way ever 
afterward. 

OUR THOUGHTS AND DEEDS MAKE US WHAT WE ARE 

It is important that we know as early in life as we can 
that every thought we have and every movement of the 
body makes its pathway in our nervous system, and that 
such a thought or such an action becomes easier the more 
often it is repeated. In other words, all our actions and 
attitudes tend to become habitual, and our lives, for 
good or for evil, are but a mass of habits. We have often 
heard it said that habit is second nature. The Duke of 
Wellington once said that habit is ten times nature, and 
the late Professor James of Harvard said that "ninety- 
nine hundredths, or possibly nine hundred and ninety- 
nine thousandths of oui activity is purely automatic or 
habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down 
each night. Our dressing, our undressing, our eating, 
our drinking, our greetings, our partings, are so fixed 
by repetitions as almost to be classed as reflex actions." 
Thus we make ourselves during the early part of our 
lives, for the most part before the age of seven years, 
and for the rest of our lives we are but "stereotyped 
creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves." 

As Professor James says, the important aim in edu- 
cation is to make our nervous system our ally instead 
of our enemy. We should begin early to make habitual 
those actions and attitudes that will cause us to live in 
harmony with our environment, and inhibit all actions 
that tend to destroy such harmony. Not only this; 



The Central Nervous System 85 

our parents should begin for us, before we know the 
importance of it, to place around us such an environ- 
ment as will produce in us such harmony. Whether our 
lives are happy or unhappy will depend upon the educa- 
tion of our nervous system. Our lives will be happy if 
we have made automatic such attitudes and habits as 
honesty, courtesy, kindness, politeness, cheerfulness, 
regard for others, sympathy, friendship, thoroughness, 
accuracy, promptness, optimism, etc., and they will be 
unhappy if we permit the opposite of these to take 
possession of us. The kind person has acquired the 
habit of kindness, and the unkind, crabbed person has 
built up the habit of unkindness. We often say that 
we can see honesty or dishonesty in a man's face, and this 
is true, for it is written there through his nervous system 
more indelibly than if it had been written with a pen 
or pencil. The honest or dishonest act builds up the 
nerve cells in a certain way; these nerve cells reflect 
their structure in the structure and tension of the muscles, 
which give the face its expression. If one wants to have 
a kind and lovable disposition, let that one have kind 
and lovely thoughts which result in kind and lovely 
deeds, for such thoughts crystallize themselves in muscle 
structure, and may be read and known of all men. This 
is what the Great Teacher meant by saying, "As a man 
thinketh in his heart, so is he." This means not only 
that a man's thoughts will give expression to his inner 
life, but that his thoughts make his life what it is. 

IMPORTANCE OF EARLY EDUCATION 

Thus we can see how important it is that parents begin 
early to develop in their children right habits. They 
should begin even while the child is in the cradle to 
throw around him such an atmosphere as will tend to 



86 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

make habitual the virtues they want him to possess. 
We open the doors of the schools to the children at the 
age of seven, but it can be said, in a very true sense, that 
the child has been educated for weal or woe before that 
time. The nervous system retains a certain degree of 
elasticity until the age of thirty-three, but by the age of 
seven the child has formed the habits that will mean 
most to him in life. He has by that time built up the 
basis for a successful and happy life, or he has laid the 
foundations for failure and unhappiness. When parents 
realize this more than many of them do to-day, they 
will not be as eager as they are to shift the responsibility 
of their children's education to incompetent, or even to 
the most competent, nurses, or to the kindergarten or 
primary teacher. 

We have often heard it said that "it is never too late 
to mend," and this is true in a sense; but it would be 
truer to say that it is always too late to mend entirely. 
The pathway that thought and action have made in our 
nervous system can never be entirely destroyed. The 
man who acquired in his early years the habit of dis- 
honesty can never be quite trusted in his later life. His 
best judgment may tell him that honesty is the best 
policy and he may try to be honest, but at a moment 
when he least expects it the old habit will express itself. 
The nerve force will jump the track he has been trying to 
form and will go back to the more easily traveled track 
made in early life. We have taken honesty as an example, 
but the same is true of the other virtues. They must 
be built up in early life, if they are ever built up. Parents 
do not intend to cultivate in their children the habit of 
extravagance, for instance, but they humor them in 
everything they want when they are young, and the 
habit is built up before they know it. If the child acquires 



The Central Nervous System 8y 

the habit of thrift and economy, he must live in such an 
environment from his early days. 

One of the most pathetic cases I ever knew illustrative 
of the fixity of nervous pathways after they have once 
been formed was that of a man who had worked hard 
in his early manhood and acquired by the time he was 
thirty-five enough property to retire. At that time he 
took a notion that he wanted an education, and he 
actually attended school a number of years with the hope 
of acquiring enough culture to admit him to good society. 
He had a bright mind and succeeded in mastering his 
studies fairly well; but his "had went," "could a saw," 
and other such blunders of speech were always a source 
of embarrassment to him and betrayed his early training. 
As soon as he had uttered such expressions, he knew 
they were incorrect; but habit was quicker than thought, 
and they came out before he could stop them. This 
case is merely illustrative of the impossibility of entirely 
overcoming habits formed in early life, and most of us 
have our struggles with a nervous system that was 
improperly shaped in our childhood. We acquired in 
school, perhaps, the habit of doing slovenly and inaccurate 
work, thinking only of " getting by " the teacher and 
making our grade, not realizing that every act of slovenli- 
ness or inaccuracy was writing itself deep in our nervous 
system ready to manifest itself in our business and in 
every relation of our lives. 

The girl learns to be a snob in school. She snubs all 
the girls except a small coterie of those she calls her 
friends, not knowing that each time she repeats an act 
of snobbery she is cutting deeper in her nerve cells the 
pathway traveled by nerve force controlled by such 
centers and fixing the habit more firmly in her each day. 
Each little act does not amount to much she thinks, if 

7 



88 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

she thinks at all, but nevertheless the habit is slowly 
forming and will make her friendless and unhappy in 
after-years. 

Let the student remember that what he wants to be 
he must try to be. He may be able to overcome a few 
bad habits if he has the strength of will, but the odds 
are one himdred to one against his having the strength 
of will, and the best plan is never to form them. As 
soon as his attention is called to the importance of form- 
ing correct habits, he should begin in earnest to form 
those habits that will be of value to him in life and avoid 
those that will be hostile to his best interests. If he 
would have his actions approved by his neighbors, he 
must begin early to make habitual those actions that 
meet their approval. He need not imagine that he can 
do as he pleases, regardless of the feelings of others, 
during the formative days of his life, and have his actions 
approved by his fellows later on. William James says: 

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells us, is 
no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by 
habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could 
the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking 
bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct 
while in the plastic state. We are spinning our fates, for good or 
evil, and never to be undone. Every small stroke of virtue or 
vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, 
in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by 
saying, "It won't count this time." Well, he may not count it, 
and a kind Heaven may not count it, but it is being counted just 
the same. Deep down in his nerve cells and fibres, the molecules 
are counting it, registering it, and storing it up to be used against 
him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in 
strict scientific literalness, wiped out A 

Those are strong words, and we are amazed at even 
the small amount of their meaning we are able to grasp. 

1 Talks to Teachers, pp. 77-78. 



The Central Nervous System 8q 

Our amazement increases when we know that they were 
written by a man who knew more about the development 
of our nervous system than, perhaps, any other man in 
his day; besides, practically every psychologist of any 
note to-day most heartily indorses what he said. They 
are all of the opinion that we are making ourselves what 
we are from day to day. Beginning with the day of our 
birth and ending on the day of our death, we are spinning 
our fates, writing the book of life that contains a perfect 
record of what we are. This is the meaning-full message 
that the study of the nervous system brings us, and it is 
a message that shotdd be brought to every child as early 
in life as possible. 

The development of the nervous system is, without 
doubt, the important problem in the education of children, 
and the question that should be foremost in the minds 
of parents and teachers is: How can such development 
be brought about? 

In the first place, parents should begin early to help 
their children form correct habits. If they depend upon 
the school and wait until the school age, the battle will 
be largely lost. By the age of seven the child has formed 
the habits that will in great part determine his future 
career. These early years are the most important of 
the child's life. They are the time when he needs the 
most careful, painstaking, and sympathetic supervision, 
and there is to-day no danger threatening our civiliza- 
tion to be compared to that of the home's failure to make 
these years count for the most in the child's education. 
If the child's work in school is going to be made to count 
in preparing him for a life of happiness and success, a 
foundation for that work must be laid in the home before 
he starts to school. The home must take hold of its task 
and not seek to shift its responsibility to the kindergarten 



QO Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and the school, for in the sacred precincts of the home, 
under the loving care of father, mother, brothers, and 
sisters, is the only place where the delicate nervous 
system of the little child can receive adequate training. 
In the home must be laid, if it is ever laid, the foundation 
for the habits of self-control, of obedience, of honesty, 
of industry, of kindness and patience, and all the other 
virtues necessary to a successful and happy life. Here 
the child's tastes must be formed; here the love of study, 
an appreciation of music, art, and good literature, must 
be created. It is fatal for parents to make the mistake 
of thinking that they can neglect the formation of these 
Habits in the child's early life and make good the loss 
later on. It is fatal for them to think that they can 
shift the responsibility for the child's early education to 
the kindergarten or the school, for these institutions at 
best are but poor substitutes for the home. The purpose 
of the kindergarten in the mind of its founder was to 
offer a poor substitute for the home to those unfortunate 
children of the very rich and the very poor who did not 
have the advantage of a home. Let no mother think 
that she can shift to the kindergarten her responsibilities 
in the education of her children without paying the price 
in their improper development. The mother is heaven's 
appointed instructor for the child during his early years, 
and she knows instinctively more of his needs and how 
to satisfy those needs than does the most skilled kinder- 
gartner or primary teacher. The mother's most sacred 
duty is the education of her children, and she cannot 
afford to shift the task to less wise, patient, and sympa- 
thetic hands. 

ENVIRONMENT IN EDUCATION 

The most important factor in the education of the 
nervous system is environment. The child instinctively 



The Central Nervous System gi 

responds to his environment. While we do not under- 
stand the action of nerve force on the nerve cells, we 
know that, in some way, it causes them to develop. We 
know that when nerve cells are not used, they remain 
undeveloped, and that when they are used, they grow. 
A postm.ortem examination of the brain of Laura Bridg- 
man, who was blind from her early childhood, showed 
that those nerve cells that had control of vision were 
undeveloped and that the cortex of the brain was thinner 
at that point. The several functions of the brain may 
possess great potentialities, but if they are never used, 
they will never attain their best. It is a well-known 
fact that the great musicians have lived in a world of 
music, in most cases, from their childhood, and have 
developed the part of their nervous system that con- 
trolled their love and appreciation for music. We cannot 
make a musician of a child if we do not place him in an 
environment of music. If we would have the child acquire 
an appreciation for poetry, we must early introduce him 
to poetry suited to his age. If we would develop in him 
a kind disposition, we must let him live in an atmosphere 
of kindness, and all the teaching in the world will be 
valueless unless it is in such an environment. In fact, 
we cannot teach the child to be kind, to love music, art, 
and poetry, or to develop his tastes along other lines, 
unless we do so by means of an environment of such 
things. When the child hears good music, the nerve 
cells in the music part of his brain become active, the 
blood rushes to them, carrying nourishment, and thus 
the neural coordinations are developed. If we would 
have the child love flowers, we must put him into an 
environment of flowers, and bring into use the correspond- 
ing nerve cells. We might have him read about flowers 
imtil he is gray-headed, but he will never come to 



g2 Present Day Tendencies in Edttcation 

appreciate them unless he is made to Hve in such an 
environment. 

However, it must be remembered that after one has 
acquired an appreciation for music — for instance, has 
developed that sense and can recall former images of 
sound — the nerve cells will respond to the memory in 
about the same way as when in contact with the thing 
itself. When I remember the smell of a rose, I put to 
work and develop my olfactory nerve centers in about 
the same way I do when I actually smell the rose. The 
memories of taste, touch, and the other senses have the 
same effect, and we should make use of this fact in the 
child's education. However, if there is neither a recall 
of the memory of these things nor actual contact with 
them, the nerve cells that control them will waste away 
and cease to function. In his autobiography Darwin 
says that until he was thirty poetry of many kinds gave 
him great pleasure, and, as a school boy, he took intense 
delight in Shakespeare. He also enjoyed music; but at 
the time he was writing, he could not endure to read a 
line of poetry and he had long before lost his taste for 
pictures and music. He had devoted himself so exclu-. 
sively to grinding out general laws from a multitude of 
facts that the nerve centers that controlled his love for 
music, poetry, and art dwindled away. He regretted 
that he had not kept up his love for these things by devot- 
ing a little time to them each day. 

It is environment that affords the developing stimuli 
for the several faculties of the nervous system. We 
have already referred to the fact that the great musicians 
were reared in an atmosphere of music. This is true 
also of the great poets. They lived with nature and 
learned to love her. One cannot read Shakespeare with- 
out realizing that his faculties of taste, of touch, of smell, 



The Central Nervous System gj 

of sight, and of sound were accurately developed, and 
those who have visited the home of his childhood at 
Stratford-on-Avon tell us that there is in all the world 
no more ideal place for the development of the senses. 
If Shakespeare had been bom and reared in London, he 
could never have written his plays. Keats, Shelley, 
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning were all students 
of nature. They loved and lived with nature. Their 
nervous systems were developed by their appreciation 
of nature, and they grew to appreciate it more and more. 

EDUCATION SHOULD BE NATURAL 

We cannot expect to develop the nervous systems of 
children by confining them to books within the musty 
walls of the average schoolroom. We cannot hope to 
have them learn to appreciate the beauties of nature 
and the good in men and women if we confine them to 
the back yard of the average city home, where they have 
no communion with the birds, the flowers, the grasses, 
the trees, and the growing fields. We must get it out 
of our heads that education is learning to read, to write, 
to spell, and to cipher, or the gaining of knowledge from 
books. We must quit rushing our children off to school 
just as soon as they are able to walk. What the schools 
teach to-day, for the most part, is required as a result 
of our civilization's being what it is and not because the 
needs of the growing child demand it. A very large 
part of the school's program is uneducative rather than 
educative, and those parents who send their children 
away from home and the beauties of nature — the real 
educators — to the kindergartens and the schools, are 
making a very serious mistake — a mistake for which 
these children in after-years will have to pay dearly in 
the lack of a proper development of their nervous systems. 



g4 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

BAD HABITS OVERCOME BY PERSISTENCY 

Let the young man or woman remember that, while 
the years of plasticity are the early years of life and those 
habits that shape our character and give us our attitude 
toward the world are formed at that time, many, many 
habits are formed later in life, and that there is hope in 
the fact that the nervous system is never absolutely 
fixed, at least not until long after the age of maturity. 
We may have let into our lives in childhood and early 
youth many enemies that will keep us from being as 
happy and successful as we might have been; but the 
battle is not entirely lost, and our hopes may be greatly 
enlarged if we will but seriously set ourselves to the task, 
set up those ideals we would attain, and struggle after 
them day after day. It is true that the fight will be harder 
than if it had been fought earlier. The enemy has 
intrenched himself in our territory and will not be dis- 
lodged without a struggle, but a constant hammering at 
him will get results if the battle is kept up day after day. 
Such persistency will find itself one day recompensed 
with a reward that will far outweigh all the hardship 
borne and all the difficulties overcome, The virtues such 
as kindness, generosity, honesty, accuracy, thoroughness, 
judgment, friendliness, and the others are not acquired 
in a single day, but the youth who keeps up the fight 
will win in the end. Those virtues will gradually grow 
to be a part of him and he will be surprised one day at 
how well he has made them his own. This is the way 
men and women are made. 

Then our nervous system is the raw material out of 
which our lives are made. What we are physically, men- 
tally, morally, and as men and women in the business and 
social world, depends upon how well we write our story. 
We hold in our own hands our destiny. We are each 



The Central Nervous System q$ 

moment in every thought we have and in every act we 
perform spinning, for good or evil to ourselves, our web 
of fate. While we may in a way patch up our past lives 
and cover up the mistakes we have made, we can never 
remove the scar. What we have written in the book of 
life can never be erased, but will 'remain a message to 
bring us happiness or unhappiness as long as we live. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. The central nervous system. 

2. The place of environment in the education of children. 

3. The education of Shakespeare. 

4. The place of nature study, art, and music in education. 

5. The educational system of the Greeks and what it had to do 
with their race ideals. 

Further Readings 

Bailey, H. T. Art Education. Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Famsworth, C. H. Education through Music. American Book Co. 
Halleck, Reuben P. Psychology and Psychic Culture^ pp. 9-42. 

American Book Co. 
. Education of the Central Nervous System, pp. 1-27, 171, 

208. Macmillan. 
James, William. Talks to Teachers, pp. 64-90. Henry Holt & Co. 
Monroe, Paul. A Brief Course in the History of Education, pp. 

28-79. Macmillan. 



T 



CHAPTER VII 
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

HERE are two phases of education that our 
schools must keep in view — an intensive and an 
extensive phase. The first is vocational; the other is 
cultural. It will not do to emphasize either phase unduly. 
However, what is cultural for one person may be voca- 
tional for another. History is vocational for the teacher 
of that subject ; it is cultural for the merchant. Chemis- 
try is vocational for the physician or the pharmacist; 
it is cultural for the lawyer or the minister. Manual 
training is vocational for the mechanic; it is cultiural 
for the merchant or the banker, and so on with all the 
other studies; they are vocational for one, cultural for 
another. No education is complete unless these two 
phases are recognized and a happy balance is kept 
between them. 

The trouble with our present educational system is 
that a proper balance has not been maintained. It is 
vocational for teaching, law, medicine, and the ministry, 
and almost purely cultural for all the other vocations. 
It takes but little cognizance of the great number of 
vocations that have sprung up during the past hundred 
years. Less than 5 per cent of our population are engaged 
in teaching, medicine, law, and the ministry. More than 
95 per cent of them are engaged in trade and transpor- 
tation, domestic and personal service, manufacturing and 
the mechanical pursuits, and agriculture. These voca- 
tions in their present form are the products of the past 
hundred years, and this is the reason why the educational 

g6 



Vocational Education P7 

system that had its inception in the Middle Ages takes 
no cognizance of them. 

It is important that we do not neglect the cultural 
side of education; but an educational system that is 
vocational for less than 5 per cent of the people and 
cultural for the rest does not maintain a proper balance 
between the two phases. What is cultural for 95 per 
cent of the people largely loses its real cultural value. 
For a subject to be cultural for one person, it must be 
vocational for his neighbor; for the cultural subject is 
that which gives one a better understanding of the work 
of his neighbor and creates a greater sympathy between 
the two. 

AIMS IN EDUCATION 

The problem confronting the schools to-day is: How 
is the new order of things to bring about the proper 
adjustment between the cultural and the vocational 
phases of education? The people who pay the taxes 
are demanding that our educational system be revised 
so as to take cognizance of the vocations that have come 
into existence in their present form during the past one 
hundred years. To meet the needs of present social 
conditions and to maintain the proper balance between 
the vocational and the cultural phase of education, our 
educational system must have the following aims: (i) 
vocational training, (2) training for homemaking, (3) 
training for citizenship, (4) training in the use of the 
mother tongue, (5) training for health conservation, 
(6) training in the right use of leisure time. 

It is our purpose at this time to discuss just the first 
aim — vocational training. In fact, vocational training 
in its broadest sense would include all the other aims we 
have mentioned. To be trained vocationally, a man must 



g8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

know something more than the mere technique of his 
vocation. He must be a good citizen; he must have 
skill in the use of his mother tongue; he must under- 
stand how to conserve not only his own health, but also 
the health of his community; and he must know how to 
spend his leisure time with profit. Vocational training 
in its fullest sense includes cultural training; it has an 
intensive and an extensive side. A man's vocation is 
his means of bringing his resources to bear on those 
around him, and a man without a vocation is as helpless 
to function in society as the engine without the belt to 
connect it with the machinery of the factory, or the 
dynamo without the wire to connect it with the motor. 
We may call the cultural training the dynamo; but the 
vocational training is the motor that turns the wheels 
of progress. No man is truly educated until he is edu- 
cated vocationally — that is, until he has a means of 
bringing his resources to bear on people and conditions 
around him. 

VOCATIONAL DIRECTION 

Vocational training begins, of course, with vocational 
direction. Every teacher should be a vocational coun- 
selor. She should be in touch with the different lines of 
work and be able to help the pupil to adjust himself 
to his vocation. The day is fast passing when the teacher 
can learn a few things about grammar, geography, and 
arithmetic, and feel that she is ready to take up the 
education of children. In fact, in the new era that is 
now dawning upon us, knowledge of the book will be 
the smallest part of the teacher's equipment. The 
teacher of the future will have to know not only books; 
she will have to know her subject ; she will have to know 
the child, and how to adapt the subject to the needs of 



Vocational Education gg 

the child; she will have to know the practical side of 
life so as to be able to prepare the child for life. We 
realize that the teacher of to-day is not to blame for her 
lack of a knowledge of the child and practical affairs. 
Her lack of such knowledge is due to no fault of her own, 
but to the system in which she was educated. The 
teacher is not to be blamed for this system, for it has 
been handed down to her from past ages and it demands 
not only that teachers be trained in a certain way, but 
that they pass this training on to others in the same way. 
But is n't it a fair question to ask, How can the teacher 
prepare the child for life when that teacher knows neither 
the child nor life, when all her knowledge consists of the 
things she has learned from books? 

When the teacher has informed herself as to child 
nature and has come into contact with practical life, she 
will be in a position to act as the child's vocational coun- 
selor and to help him to make a choice of a vocation as 
early as possible. Dr. Eliot says that the child should 
select his vocation early so as to give his education the 
benefit of a ** life-career motive." When a boy has selected 
his life's work and realizes that what he is doing in school 
is a preparation for it, he is on the road to success, and 
there will be no trouble about his conduct or his appli- 
cation to his studies. In truth, motivation is the greatest 
need in our school work to-day. Many boys and girls 
come to school just because they are sent; some of them 
are driven; they have no interest in their work because 
they do not see that it leads them to anything. About 
the only lesson that many boys and girls learn in school 
is how to evade all real work, and, instead of their school- 
ing being a means of education for them, it is many times 
positively demoralizing. What good does a boy get 
from ancient history when he has no interest in the 



100 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

subject, his only aim being to get credit toward graduation, 
and when he is willing to play all kinds of tricks and 
work all kinds of schemes to **get by" the teacher with- 
out work? We dare say that less than lo per cent of 
the boys and girls are interested in their work because 
of its value to them in preparation for life. Even those 
who make high grades are frequently actuated by false 
motives and nearly all think more of the credit than they 
do of the practical value of the subject. The lack of 
interest, low grade of work, and general carelessness and 
indifference are the greatest menace to our school work 
to-day, and the only solution of the problem is to adapt 
the school program to the present needs of the pupil and, 
as early as possible, inspire him with a "life-career mo- 
tive." 

Psychologists tell us that a study is worthless to the 
pupil unless he becomes self -active in it, and to become 
self-active in his school work the pupil must have a 
motive that will arouse his interest. What motive is 
there to actuate the boy who studies Latin because his 
father forces him to it, or because his playmate studies 
it? When the boy realizes that he can stay in school but 
a short time and the question of self-support is staring 
him in the face, what interest can he have in the binomial 
theory or the reign of Shalmaneser? When the boy has 
made up his mind to be a merchant, how can you expect 
him to be interested in those subjects in school that he 
knows he will never need ? All teachers know the trouble 
they have in trying to get even average work done by 
boys and girls, but they seem to be willing to go on in 
the same old way rather than adjust the school to the 
needs of the child and to inspire him with a sufficient 
motive. 

When the pupil has been inspired with a life-career 



Vocational Education loi 

motive, he will work not merely to master his vocation' 
but his enthusiasm will extend to his other studies. His 
English, his history, his mathematics, will not mean the 
same to him when he sees that they will help him along 
the line of his chosen work. He may even see the rela- 
tion of the study of foreign languages to his future career, 
and, if he does, he is in a position to get some real benefit 
from it. In fact, it is not the purpose of vocational 
inspiration to narrow the pupil's interests, but to broaden 
them and make them many-sided. 

SOME RESULTS OF FALSE EDUCATIONAL IDEALS 

It is extremely important to-day in the education of 
boys and girls to inculcate a proper attitude toward work. 
The movement toward the education of all the people 
without changing our educational system to meet the new 
conditions has tended to create in the minds of many 
people the feeling that work is degrading, and all of us 
are dominated to a greater or less degree by the old 
conception of education that its purpose is to help us 
to keep from working. As Principal Lewis says, "there 
are thousands of men whom the Lord intended to follow 
the plow and drive nails, gouging each other and mulct- 
ing the public in the shabby genteel rush after patients, 
clients, and congregations. Pills and red tape are dis- 
pensed everywhere, but you have to hunt a long time 
before you can find the man who can plant the garden 
or fix the storm window. This is because our educational 
train has been through scheduled for the professions* 
and the thousands who found that they did not care 
to reach this destination have been bowled off like 
mail sacks wherever it happened, instead of being com- 
fortably landed where they ought to, have gone." 

The report of the census of 1910 says: "It is a 



K 



102 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

significant fact that between 1900 and 19 10, the urban 
population increased 34.8 per cent and the rural popula- 
tion only 1 1 . 2 per cent. The report shows that the farm 
acreage increased only 4 . 8 per cent. The cereal products 
increased 3 . 5 per cent in acreage, i . 7 per cent in quantity, 
and 79.8 per cent in value." This explains, in part at 
least, our high cost of living. So many people have left 
the farm that there are not enough remaining to supply 
the rest with raw products. Thus, all society has to 
suffer because of our false educational ideals, which have 
resulted in an improper vocational adjustment. 

V^ Not only has the old regime with its Latin, ancient 
history, and algebra absolutely failed in preparing men 
and women vocationally to perform their proper func- 
tions in society; but it has actually driven them out of 
school before they received even the rudiments of an 
education. Professor Thomdike of Columbia University, 
in a careful, scientific investigation of the elimination of 
pupils from the schools, says in a report made for the 
United States Bureau of Education that, out of everv 
100 pupils entering school, 10 have dropped out by the 
end of the third grade, 19 by the end of the fourth, 32 
by the end of the fifth, 46 by the end of the sixth, and 
60 by the end of the seventh. Only 27 enter first-year 
high school, 17 enter the second, 12 enter the third, and 
8 enter the fourth year. He does not tell how many 

. graduate. 

-^ As to the cause of the elimination. Professor Thomdike 
says: "One of the main causes for the elimination is 
incapacity for and lack of interest in the sort of intel- 
lectual work demanded by the present course of study." 
With this view such educators as Professor Dewey, 
ex-President Eliot, Dr. Cubberley, Dr. Winship, and, in 
fact, all the progressive educators of the day agree. The 



Vocational Education loj 

governor of Massachusetts, a few years ago, appointed 
a commission to look into the question, and after a study 
embracing 5,500 children in over 3,000 homes this com- 
mission came to the conclusion that these boys and girls 
did not have to drop out of school because they were not 
able financially to stay in, but they dropped out because 
of a lack of interest in and appreciation of the course 
of study. 

Yet, in spite of the failure of the old regime to meet the 
educational needs of the great majority of our people, 
we still continue to talk about high aims in education 
and cry "fad" if anybody says anything about the 
practical study that will interest boys and girls and keep 
them in school. 

We do not want to leave the impression that we are 
in favor of the elimination of the old-time cultural study 
from our school program. Latin, ancient history, and 
algebra have served a noble purpose for a great many 
men and women in the past, and there is a class which 
they will reach at present; but the class is comparatively 
small. Granting that these old-time studies are good, 
there is a chance of one's having even too much of a 
good thing. We once knew an old doctor who pre- 
scribed just one kind of medicine.' The first thing he 
did when he came into the sick room was to ask the 
patient to "stick out" his tongue, and we always knew 
beforehand the results of his diagnosis: "You need a 
course of calomel." Now calomel is a good medicine 
for many purposes, but this old doctor is the only one 
we ever knew who thought it was a remedy for all diseases. 
Latin is a good tonic for a good many boys and girls who 
have a taste for intellectual pursuits, but this is not 
true of the great majority of them, who are motor-minded, 
and we make a great mistake when we prescribe a dose 

8 



104 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

of Latin, algebra, and ancient history for every patient 
that comes to us. 

PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST 

One trouble with our educational system is that it is 
not adapted to the needs of the pupils; another is that 
it does not put first things first. Interested in what we 
call the higher things of life, we have lost sight of those 
things that are more fundamental. We are like the man 
who built his house on the sand. As long as the weather 
was fair, the sand foundation did as well as any other, 
and nobody could tell the difference between the house on 
the sand and that which was founded on the rock. But 
when the floods came, the winds blew, and the rain de- 
scended, the difference was easily seen. We suspect that 
the man who built his house on the sand even laughed at 
his neighbor for doing so much work in digging down to 
the rock for a foundation. When education was a luxury 
for the rich, rather than a necessity for the common man 
as it is to-day, it made but little difference what the boys 
and girls studied in school, just so they were acquiring 
some information their less fortunate neighbors did not 
have. But in this day of sharp competition, when con- 
ditions demand that everyone have that training which 
best prepares him for his place in life, it does make a 
great difference, and the difference is a matter of success 
or failtire. 

When we visited the Pan-American Exposition in 
Buffalo in 1901, we saw a house upside down. It was 
poised on the roof and the foundation was pointing 
upward. This house attracted the attention of every- 
body, for all knew that that was not the proper position 
for a house. All knew that the foundation should come 
first, then the body of the house, then the roof. This 



Vocational Education 105 

is as true of education as it is of houses. The physical 
comes first, then tlie mental and the moral. Man never , 
begins to advance in civilization until his physical needs 
have been satisfied. We may seem to be able to satisfy 
his higher needs before we satisfy the lower ones, but 
in attempting to do so V\re shall make a situation that is 
as ill-adapted to its environment as the house that was 
built upside down. The satisfaction of the higher needs 
always follows the satisfaction of the lower. This is why 
the missionary societies are beginning to see the impor- 
tance of sending the physician to care for the body of the 
heathen along with the preacher who cares for his soul. 
This is why they are building hotels, sanitariums, bath 
houses, as they have never done before. They are no 
longer satisfied with merely teaching the people about 
the higher things of life. They are realizing that man 
is not in a condition to talk about the higher things 
until he is supplied with bread, meat, warm clothing, 
and sufficient shelter. The sad condition in many raral 
communities existing, in spite of the fact that much money 
is being spent to give them the advantages of good schools, 
is due to our trying to give them what we call the cultural 
side of education ijefore helping them to satisfy their 
physical needs. The average man in such a community 
has to work so hard to secure a livelihood that he has 
no time to enjoy this culture if he had it. The first and 
most important thing is to give him skill in his vocation 
so that he can readily satisfy his physical wants; then 
he will have the time and the disposition to satisfy his 
higher desires. The vast amount of money appropri- 
ated by legislatures for rural schools will be absolutely 
wasted if it does not give the people of the rural com- 
munities greater vocational skill. These people must 
learn to plant and cultivate crops to advantage before 



io6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

they will be in a position to appreciate the beauties of 
English literature and the mysteries of science and phi- 
losophy. This is true not only of the agricultural class; 
it is true of almost all other classes. They do not rise 
to higher standards of living except as a result of better 
vocational skill. Nor need we fear that by stressing the 
bread-and-butter side of life we shall lose sight of the 
higher aims. These higher aims are important, but we 
cannot satisfy them until we have satisfied the lower. 

EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS 

Then to say that making the vocational study the 
foundation of our public-school work would eliminate the 
higher conceptions of education is to take a shortsighted 
view of the process of social evolution. Education in 
the past has not been a determining factor in social 
progress because of its purely cultural aims. The deter- 
mining factor in social progress is the economic. Civili- 
zation never goes ahead of economic progress. The 
world's present civilization was made possible by the 
industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. In 
that revolution the old order of things was overthrown and 
new forces were put into operation which make possible 
the high standards of civilization we now enjoy. If it 
had not been for this industrial revolution, which made 
it possible for man to satisfy his physical needs more 
easily, we should now be living under the same conditions 
as the man of the early eighteenth century. As a result 
of economic progress in the United States, the common 
man enjoys conditions of life that would have brought 
jo}^ to the hearts of kings in past ages. He enjoys these 
conditions, not because of our educational system, but 
because conditions are such that he can supply himself 
with the necessities of life and have plenty of time left 



Vocational Education loy 

for recreation and self -improvement. The public libra^ 
ries, the public parks, the museums, the schools, and 
colleges have come into existence, not because his edu- 
cational progress has caused him to demand them; but 
they are a result of economic progress and he has learned 
to appreciate them. In fact, most of these things are 
at first forced on the people by external conditions. 
Even the public school is forced on the people by the 
state, and, when there is an alternative, they often refuse 
to make the most of it. This is evidenced by the niggardly 
support most of the schools receive from the people. In 
most communities it seems to be the aim to pay the 
teacher the lowest possible salary, get along with the 
least possible equipment, and, indeed, to have the name 
of having a school with as little expense as possible. 

To rise in civilization, men must be able to satisfy 
their physical desires and have time left for the prose- 
cution of higher aims. According to Professor Gillette: 

Until approximately the nineteenth century, the wealthy classes 
furnished about all the men of talent. This was not because talent 
was confined to that class; but the rest of mankind had to work 
so incessantly to make a living that they had no time or opportunity 
for culture. In Greece, it was the wealthy classes who owned the 
slaves to make a living for them, that furnished the artists, the 
men of letters, the philosophers, and the statesmen, i 

Men were ignorant during the Middle Ages because 
they had to work so incessantly that they had no time 
for self-improvement. To-day, in America, all classes " 
are contributing to achievement because all have sufficient 
leisure for self -improvement. 

With short hours and higher wages, all have time for 
the prosecution of higher aims; but when economic con- 
ditions are not right, all the institutions of learning in 

1 Vocational Education, p. io8. 



io8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the world cannot cause man to rise in civilization. The 
only way to be sure that we shall keep on progressing 
toward better things is to see that every man has the 
vocational skill to satisfy his physical needs and has 
time left for self-improvement. 

LACK OF VOCATIONAL SKILL CAUSE OF POVERTY 
AND CRIME 

The importance of vocational skill is also seen in its 
relation to poverty and crime. In the United States, 
the richest country in the world, in a fairly prosperous 
year there are over ten million people in poverty, over 
two millions of w^orkingmen are employed from four to 
six months in the year, over five million women who 
should not be working find it necessary to work. About 
ten million people now living will die of tuberculosis 
caused by improper conditions of life due to poverty. 
The total cost of this poverty to the United States has 
been estim^ated at fifteen hundred million dollars, to 
say nothing of the suffering, the -v^Tetched lives, and 
the blasted hopes. 

The cost of crime every year in the United States has 
been estimated at $1,075,000. There are 250,000 people 
in the United States making a living by crime. When 
we consider the loss to society of the productive power 
of those who devote all their time and those who 
devote only a part of it to crime, the cost is beyond 
comprehension . 

Those who are in a position to know tell us that poverty 
is due, in the great majority of instances, to a lack of 
vocational skill. Professor Gillette says that much of 
the poverty is due to inability to compete with more 
skilled labor. 

Mr. Carrol D. Wright has said that "hunger leads 



Vocational Education log 

to more crime than any other cause" and that "labor 
properly remunerated is a guarantee against crime." 
The lack of proper training has a large share in producing 
criminals. Of 4,340 convicts in the state of Massa- 
chusetts, 68 per cent had no vocation; in Pennsylvania, 
88 per cent of the convicts had no vocational training; 
68 per cent of those sentenced to jails and work houses 
in Pennsylvania had no occupation. Of the homicides 
committed in the United States in 1890, 74 per cent 
were committed by men without a vocation. 

As evidence of the effect of vocational training on 
pauperism and crime, it is said that not a single graduate 
of the Hampton and Tuskeegee institutes can be found 
in any jail or state penitentiary. All those who attend 
these institutes are taught trades, and more than 90 
per cent of them are successful. If vocational training 
has had such a wonderful influence for good among 
the negroes, who can estimate its possibilities for our 
own race? 

When we have considered the cost to society caused 
by poverty and crime, we have hardly begun to estimate 
the real cost due to a lack of vocational training. If we 
take into consideration the positive misery, the undevel- 
oped characters, the unattained ideals, and the unwhole- 
some social conditions, the loss cannot be estimated in 
terms of money. We talk about the higher things in 
life, and are afraid that the material will be unduly 
emphasized; but our educational system, as it is organ- 
ized at present, makes it impossible for the great mass 
of the people to enjoy these things. In fact, those who 
take our school course and get anything from it are those 
who could best afford to do without it. They are in 
such a condition that they could get along fairlyjwell 
without the help of the public schools. It is those whom 



no Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the system does not reach that need it most. The 
greatest need of those whom our schools are driving 
away is not Latin, Greek, formal mathematics, and book 
science. Their greatest need is vocational training in its 
broadest sense. 

Enough has been said to prove the importance of 
vocational training in individual progress. In the past, 
education has followed economic progress and has been 
determined by it; but when vocational training is made 
the center of public-school work, it will be a determining 
factor. In our present education we are dominated too 
much by the ideals of the past, when education was not 
intended for the masses, but for the chosen few; and we 
are violating the spirit of public education by trying 
to adapt the ideals of the past to present conditions. 
We are too much dominated by the idea that the child 
is heir to the learning of the past ages and that it is the 
function of the school to bring him into his inheritance. 
The reason the boys and girls leave school in such nimi- 
bers is that they cannot see that the history of Chaldea, 
Latin, Greek, and conic sections will help them to make 
better merchants, farmers, mechanics, or housekeepers. 
In the past when competition was not so sharp as it is 
to-day, when ideals were not so high, when education 
was regarded as a special attainment for the man of 
leisure rather than as a positive necessity for the average 
man, the inadequacy of the purely cultural aim was not 
so evident. But in this age of the concentration of 
capital, when man is pitted against man in a way the 
world has never known before, when the apprentice 
system is fast passing and can no longer be regarded as 
an effective means of giving vocational training, the 
inadequacy of the cultural aim is evident to all. Those 
whose eyes are not completely blinded by tradition can 



Vocational Editcation iii 

clearly see that the schools must give the boys and girls 
vocational training or turn them loose in the world unable 
to cope with its problems. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Vocational guidance in the United States. 

2. Vocational education in the United States. 

3. The economic factor in civilization and its relation to education. 

4. The Gary school system. 

Further Readings 

Bloomfield, Meyer. The Vocational Guidance of Youth. Houghton 
Mifflin Co. 

Brewster, Edwin Tenney. Vocational Guidance for the Professions. 
Rand McNally & Co. 

Cubberley, E. P. Changing Conception of Education. Houghton 
Mifflin Co. 

Dickson, Marguerite Stockman. Vocational Training for Girls. 
Rand McNally & Co. 

Gillette, John M. Vocational Education. American Book Co. 

Lewis, William D. Democracy's High School. Houghton Mifflin Co. 

Puffer, J. Adams. Vocational Guidance — The Teacher as a Counse- 
lor. Rand McNally & Co. 

Snedden, David. The Problem of Vocational Education. Houghton 
Mifflin Co. 

Weeks, Ruth Mary. The People's School. Houghton Mifflin Co. 



CHAPTER VIII 
AVOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

WESTERN civilization has reflected four purposes 
of education. They are usually designated as the 
ends or aims of education. One of these aims is the 
perfection of character and implies the harmonious develop- 
ment of all those attributes that contribute to individual 
well-being and happiness. Another is culture, and by the 
term we mean a knowledge of the social, literary, and 
aesthetic heritage of the race, without reference to the 
use or application of this knowledge to particular ends. 
Discipline, or the training of the mental faculties without 
reference to special functioning processes, is another aim 
that has been widely recognized in education. Voca- 
tional training is the fourth end of education and implies 
special training for a definite, particular purpose. All 
of these are clearly understood by the educator and are 
given recognition throughout our system of schools. 

The object of this chapter is to show that another aim 
of education should find a place in the educational thought 
of the times. Some have made it synonymous with 
culture. Others have asstimed it to be an extension 
of the cultural ideal of education and a complement 
to vocational education. It makes large use of the 
disciplinary idea of education and it is designed to get 
its compelling force from the character-product of edu- 
cational accomplishment. It may be designated as 
avocational education. A reference to the dictionary 
shows that avocation means "the calling away or with- 
drawal of a person from an employment," or "a milder 
or less important occupation, a by-work." Vocation as 

112 



Avocational Education iij 

contrasted with avocation means "employment, occupa- 
tion, business, trade, professional and mechanical occu- 
pations" that may be pursued as a means of livelihood. 
The word "avocation" is generally used to designate 
those social activities that are not performed as a part 
of a regular or economic employment. Such tasks are 
usually performed without the expectation of financial 
reward. It is not to be inferred, however, that all avoca- 
tional activities are of this nature. There are condi- 
tions under which men perform avocational tasks purely 
through economic motives, and the work performed may 
not contribute directly to social welfare. Such activities, 
however, are not under consideration in this discussion. 
The problem of avocational education grows out of the 
social significance of human effort. Such activities are 
not to be regarded as of less importance than economic 
occupations. It is a "by-work" only in the sense that 
it is not vocational. It is not necessarily even a by- 
!:)roduct of vocational effort. It may have no connection 
whatever with the routine occupations of life. 

THE JUSTIFICATION FOR AVOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

Two facts underlie this new aim in education. In the 
first place, society has greatly increased in complexity 
in modern times. In the second place, the opportunity 
for leisure and the number of people who will enjoy its 
blessings have greatly multiplied under changing political, 
economic, and social conditions. These are significant 
facts and they represent correlative values. With the 
increasing complexity of the social order have come new 
demands upon social effort. The energies released by 
the change in economic demands are now available for 
social vise. In a simpler social order the requirements 
of society could be met in an incidental way without 



114 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the need for special training. This is no longer possible. 
We are now teaching that independent states and dis- 
tinct nationalities have the right of self-determination 
with reference to their internal organization. The 
acceptance of this doctrine calls into action a trained 
citizenship. Every independent nation is constantly- 
being confronted with complicated economic and social 
problems that have close interrelations with political 
action. The application of social justice to many con- 
crete situations requires a high order of intelligence and 
lofty standards of ethics. Family relations, religious 
activities, and aesthetic influences present endless prob- 
lems of great complexity that demand the consideration 
of experts specially trained to deal with particular aspects 
of these problems. It is to be observed, of course, that 
many of these problems have created a demand for 
vocational effort for which special training has been 
provided, but many others are still to receive attention 
by unpaid workers with a passion for social service. 
These conditions compel us to recognize the necessity 
for a new type of educational training. The hope of 
sustaining a progressive society is in the recognition of 
the necessity of supplementing existing educational 
courses with courses that will meet the needs of avoca- 
tional requirements. 

The importance of special training for political life is 
well presented by Professor Walter Robison Smith. He 
says : 

Economic intelligence is the outgrowth of training for vocational 
life, social intelligence of training for social life, and cultural intel- 
ligence of training for avocational life. These three phases of 
intelligence form the best foundation on which to build political 
intelligence. All political action, except that dealing with the mere 
structure and outer form of government, demands a knowledge of 
one of the other phases of Ufe. It remains, however, for the State 



Avocattonal Education 



115 



to protect itself by guaranteeing that each citizen, and particularly 
each voter, shall gain a knowledge of his responsibilities to the 
Government, and the methods of exercising those responsibilities, 
and that he develop a proper attitude toward its varied activities. 
The good citizen must not only obey the law; he must help to make 
and enforce it. Consequently explicit training is required along 
political as well as along the other lines. 1 

The good citizen must do much more than obey the law or help 
make or enforce it. In fact, the best test of good citizenship is 
revealed in those aspects of life in no way connected with the law 
enforcement. The sense of community responsibility is the clearest 
test of loyal citizenship. 



THE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE LEISURE CLASS 

Employment and achievement in htiman society are 
largely promoted through the opportunity and use of 
leisure. Groups of workers whose opportunities for 
leisure are shut out by long hours of economic employ- 
ment do not and cannot contribute substantially to 
social welfare. 

The leisure class [says Professor Smith] continues to progress 
only as it elevates avocational interests into vocational accomplish- 
ment. A large share of the orators, painters, writers, statesmen, 
musicians, inventors, scientists, and philosophers who have made 
original contributions to society have done so by virtue of serious 
work along avocational lines. Many of them, including such men 
as Darwin, Spencer, Bismarck, Gladstone, and Roosevelt, have had 
no vocations, but others, such as college professors, physician- 
scientists, and lawyer-statesmen, have carried on vocational activi- 
ties at the time they were making their avocational contributions. 
Inventors, artists, and litterateurs often do their best work for little 
pay and make their living by more ephemeral labors. As leisure 
is spread through the masses under modem improved conditions, 
avocations that are culturally useful must be given them and they 
must be inspired to employ them in both self-improvement and 
community betterment.^ 

^ An Introduction to Educational Sociology, pp. 151-152. 
^Op. cit., p. 149. 



Ii6 Present Day Tendencies in Educatio-n 

Under the demands of modern society leisure has 
acquired a dynamic significance. The term no longer 
implies inactivity. "An habitual neglect of work," says 
Veblen, "does not constitute a leisure class; neither does 
the mechanical fact of use and consumption constitute 
ownership." 1 Not only is some form of activity expected, 
but social pressure is being exercised to compel the 
direction of htmian effort into constructive channels. 
"The conspicuous leisure," of which Veblen spoke, that 
included "calls, drives, clubs, sewing-circles, and sports" 
d )es not meet the demands of present-da}^ society. 
Emphasis is now being laid upon the conservation of 
human effort and its wise direction. Leisure is now used 
not only for recreation, but for other activities with a 
more serious purpose. 

The more complex our civilization becomes, the more 
important it will be for our leisure to be used for social 
ends, and the greater the necessity for the sacrifice of 
profitless recreation. This abstraction can be concretely 
illustrated by conditions created b};- the war. The war 
has greatly increased the social needs and problems of 
the country. The Red Cross, the Young Men's Christian 
Association, the war library, recreational camp activities, 
Liberty Loan and savings- stamps campaigns, problem.s 
of food production and conservation, the dissemination 
of information relating to the causes of the war, and 
many other social activities have been thrust upon the 
people. These are new problems to us. There are 
relatively few men and women with previous preliminary 
training to undertake these social tasks. To the credit 
of the nation, men and women have responded promptly 
and in liberal numbers. But it is not surprising that 
it has been impossible to prevent waste of social effort 

1 The Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 22. 



Awcationai Education 117 

through defective coordination of social effort and in- 
experience in the performance of social tasks. Successful 
business or professional experience has proved not to be 
adequate preparation for the successful solutions of 
complicated social problems. 

It is probable that one of the lessons that the war will 
teach us is that of the necessity of preparing the forces 
behind the lines for constructive, coordinated social efforts 
in time of war. There is a liability for social service as 
well as a liability for military service. Its recognition 
should be included in any program of national welfare, 
but we must not forget at the same time that in 
this realm there is a need of preparedness for effective 
social effort in peace times. Some of the factors and 
conditions entering into this problem will now be 
presented. 

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL BASIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITY 

If a vocational education is to function in leisure hours, 
it is important to consider the physiological effects of 
the use of free time for such purposes. The nature of 
vocational employment and the hours consumed con- 
stitute an important factor in this problem. But the 
relation of work to fatigue has an important bearing upon 
the extent and the possibilities of social effort. Fatigue 
may be defined in terms of its effects on effort, or the 
sensations produced on the individual as a result of long- 
continuous hours of labor. These definitions may be 
formulated as follows: Fatigue is the decreased capacity 
for work as determined by quantitive production; or it 
is a sensation of lassitude that produces a disagreeable 
feeling. The signs of fatigue are weariness, decreasing 
interest, tendency toward inattention, and, in extreme 
cases, headache and similar uncomfortable sensations. 



Ii8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

Fatigue may be traced to two causes: (i) the consump- 
tion of an energy-producing substance, (2) the generation 
of certain poisons that affect the system. The energy- 
producing substance is called glycogen. This is a chemical 
product produced in the liver and muscles from sub- 
stances extracted from the blood. Muscular energy is 
liberated when oxygen from the blood unites with this 
glycogen. The liver acts as a reservoir for the storage 
of glycogen and replenishes the muscular supply when it 
becomes exhausted. But long and strenuous activity 
exhausts the supply of glycogen in the muscles and greatly 
reduces the supply in the liver. Complete exhaustion 
follows the complete constmiption of all the glycogen 
from the liver and muscles, and restoration comes slowly 
as the supply is renewed. 

Nature has provided a means of preventing this con- 
dition, however, by providing for another reaction to 
physical exertion. Certain by-products, including lactic 
acid and carbon dioxide, are generated as the energy- 
producing product is formed. These act as a poison to 
the tissues, and a sufficient quantity of them will affect 
muscular action. The sensation produced by the reac- 
tion of these poisons is always felt before the absolute 
exhaustion of the supply of glycogen, and fatigue under 
normal conditions is due to this cause. It should be 
observed that under normal and not too prolonged 
activity these poisons are absorbed so rapidly that no 
effect is produced by them. 

As avocational work is usually a change from vocational 
activity involving physical exertion, another question 
enters into the consideration. Is nerve fatigue due to 
the same causes as muscular fatigue? This question 
depends upon a more fundamental one: Is it possible 
to distinguish between muscular and nervous fatigue? 



Avocational Education iig 

There is some evidence to support the theory that ner- 
vous fatigue is traceable to the reduction of an energy- 
producing content. There is a possibility that nerve 
fatigue is due to the consequence of fatigue-products 
passing from the muscles into the blood. This theory is 
supported by the fact that violent physical exertion 
continued for some time always produces mental lassi- 
tude. It has not been possible to separate sufficiently 
muscular and nervous fatigue, under normal conditions, 
to justify safe conclusions. This intimate reaction would 
seem to indicate that both fatigue of nerve and fatigue of 
muscle are due to the same causes ; namely, the reduction 
of the energy-product in both muscle and nerves and the 
reaction to accumulated poisons resulting from physical 
and mental exertion. 

Some effort has been made to consider mental fatigue 
as a different phenomenon from nervous and muscular 
fatigue. But it seems justifiable to regard mental fatigue 
as a term to indicate the joint reaction of nerve and 
muscle to prolonged activity. The intimate correlation 
of nerve and muscle activity seems to justify us in regard- 
ing this as a mere academic question. 

Three stages of muscular work are described by Miss 
Josephine Goldmark in her admirable study of this sub- 
ject: "First, when working power is on the increase and 
excitability is growing; second, the period when the 
muscle is in its best working condition, its excitability 
highest; and, third, the period when fatigue products clog 
the muscle more and more until contraction is finally 
forced to cease. "^ The object of training is to prolong 
the first two stages and retard the third stage. This is 
accomplished by increasing the cell capacity to generate 



1 Fatigue and EjSMency, p. 35. 

9 



120 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

energy-products, and at the same time by giving to the 
tissues greater resistance to accumulating fatigue poisons. 
The analogy to this process is seen in bodily adjustments 
to poisonous drugs. It is possible for the habitual user 
of harmful drugs gradually to increase the amount con- 
simied to such quantity as would produce death in the 
person unaccustomed to taking them. Physical and 
mental training performs a similar task for nerve and 
muscle. 

The point of this discussion for this study is the influ- 
ence of fatigue on the change from vocational to avoca- 
tional activities. Is fatigue prevented by a complete 
change of occupations? Is rest secured only by a com- 
plete inactivity, or may it be secured by change of occu- 
pations? The effect of prolonged inactivity is well 
described by Lester F. Ward. He says: 

Prolonged inactivity becomes intensely painful. Thus imprison- 
ment becomes a terrible punishment. The pain resulting from 
inactivity is called ennui. Many leisure-class authors have painted 
the horrors of ennui. Helvetius indulges in an apotheosis of com- 
pulsory labor as a sure escape from ennui, and truly says that the 
pain of fatigue cannot be compared to that of ennui. It is on this 
ground more than any other that he and other authors insist that 
the poor are happier than the rich. Montesquieu says that they 
ought to have put continual idleness among the pains of hell, and 
Schopenhauer declares that while want is the scourge of the lower 
classes, ennui is the scourge of the upper, and that all the hope that 
is held out for the future is a choice between the torments of hell 
and the ennui of heaven.^ 

This disposes of one aspect of the question. If Ward 
is correct, we shall be justified in tinning to the other 
phase of the question raised in this discussion. In a 
recent study of this subject by Professors Hollingsworth 
and Poffenberger the following answer is given: 

^Applied Sociology, p. 244. 



Avocational Education 121 

There are two answers possible to the question as to whether a 
change of occupations is a rest. If fatigue is due to the local 
exhaustion of energy-producing material or is due to the local accu- 
mulation of fatigue poisons, then fatigue itself can be considered a 
local condition, and a change of occupation requiring the use of 
other mechanisms than those affected by the previous activity, 
would constitute a rest. If, on the other hand, activity causes a 
general reduction in the supply of material by drawing from the 
blood stream the necessary constituents, and general poisoning by 
throwing into the blood stream the poisonous by-products of activity, 
which are then circulated through the body, change from one occu- 
pation to another requiring equal activity would not constitute a 
rest. Practically every case of activity of a limited sort produces 
both a local and a less pronounced general transferred fatigue. 
The supply of material does not immediately follow the demand, 
hence other parts than those which have been acting may be rela- 
tively fresher. But the total amount of fatigue is not reduced by 
the shift of activity. 

When the second task is easier than the first, that is, requires 
the consumption of less energy, then it will give rest or relief when 
compared with the effects of a continuation of the original work. 
It would be better to say that there is in such a case a relative 
reduction in the amount of energy consumed. Usually the changes 
of occupation which we make when tired are toward the easier and 
more pleasurable tasks. One's own inclination seems to take care 
of that, so that the common impression is likely to be that changes 
of occupation are a distinct rest.i 

Most natural occupations cause a general reduction in 
the energy-producing product, and, therefore, a change 
of occupations does not produce complete rest. This 
situation calls into account another factor that enters 
vitally into the problem of avocational opportunity. 

THE SOCIOLOGICAL BASIS OF AVOCATIONAL ACTIVITIES 

The problem of avocational activities then must be con- 
sidered in the light of the nature, period, and conditions 
of vocational employment. The extent of overstrain 

^Applied Psychology, p. 148 (1917). 



122 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and the number of hours of continuous employment 
enter vitally into a consideration of this subject. Obvi- 
ously a body in which every muscle and organ is 
completely tired out would require a longer time and 
more complete inactivity to restore its total energy- 
content than one in which local and limited exhaustion 
of the energy is experienced. Long hours and generalized 
work produce the former effect ; shorter hours and special- 
ized employment yield the latter results. 

Overstrain is usually produced from highly specialized 
and complex industrial occupations. Those activities 
that involve speed and complexity, minute processes, 
piecework, and monotony are fatiguing, although only 
few muscles and organs are usually involved. Where 
any of these conditions are accompanied by noisy 
machinery and mechanical rhythms, nervous fatigue may 
accompany local exhaustion of particular organs and 
muscles. 

The reduction in the number of hours of the working 
day is a significant factor in this problem. The demand 
for a shorter working day on the part of organized labor 
has been one of the most interesting aspects of the labor 
problem. There has been a gradual reduction in the 
number of hours of labor per day under the insistent 
demands of labor influence. In the beginning of the 
nineteenth century the working day may be conserva- 
tively estimated to have averaged approximately twelve 
hours, and in many occupations fourteen to sixteen hours 
was the prevailing period. Fourteen hours was required 
in some industries even until 1880.^ The Bureau of Labor 
in an investigation of the hours of labor of 4,000 manu- 
facturing plants in the United States found that the 
average number of working hours per week had been 

1 Carleton, History and Problems of Organized Labor, p. 137 



Avocational Education 123 

decreased in the ratio of 100.7 ^o 95.0 between 1890 
and 1907.^ 

An eight-hour day has been the aim of organized labor. 
The pressure was first felt in the case of unhealthful and 
hazardous occupations and in the case of unusually 
influential unions, but many things, including inventions, 
steam, and electrical power, have contributed to this 
movement. Recent federal legislation with reference to 
railroad employment which was initiated by President 
Wilson seems to have made the eight-hour day a certainty 
in American industrial life. 

The effects of this reduction of the working day are 
destined to produce a profound influence on the habits, 
the standards of living, and the influence exerted by "the 
industrial classes affected by this change. This move- 
ment is gradually creating leisure for a large number of 
men and women who previously, owing to long hours, 
were engaged in vocational activities to the limit of their 
physical endurance and capacities. It is not to be pre- 
sumed that the release of human energies of thousands of 
people will be immediately directed toward useful ends. 
In many cases the temporary and immediate effects have 
been decidedly harmful. Some thought must be given 
to a means of redirecting these released energies into 
social and useful channels. Two problems appear at 
once: (i) In the first place, it will be necessary gradually 
to enlarge the program of healthful recreational activities. 
(2) In the second place, plans must be devised that will 
direct a part of the available free time into educational 
opportunities. The first problem will greatly enlarge the 
scope of social service. The second problem will enlarge 
the scope of the curricula of schools and colleges and 
other less formal educational agencies. Educational 

1 Bulletin No. 77, July, 1908. 



124 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

facilities must be provided and methods devised to prepare 
the millions of workers and prospective workers who are 
gradually acquiring from two to four hours of leisure 
that were formerly given to toil for enlarged opportunities 
to live completely by contributing to the welfare of society. 

THE NEED FOR AVOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

Is Special training necessary for those whose social 
efforts will be incidental to some formal economic voca- 
tion? It has been presumed in the past that little, if 
any, previous preparation was required. It has been 
assumed that the same standards of efficiency are not 
necessary for both vocational and avocational activity, 
but in recent times new ideals have been established with 
reference to these social activities. The complexity of 
the problems, and in many cases the scientific aspects 
of them, have resulted in the transforming of avocational 
activities into vocational emplo3rment. Social service in 
its application to particular problems has created this 
demand. There are now in process of transformation 
many incidental social tasks that will soon become 
established technical vocations. The colleges and uni- 
versities of the land have recognized this situation, and 
many courses have been provided to meet the needs of 
persons training for expert social work. But if it is 
recognized that technical training is necessary to secure 
efficiency on the part of those who devote a normal day's 
work each day in the week to some of these social tasks, 
does not the same logic suggest that it is equally impor- 
tant to supplement vocational training with training for 
social service for those who would seriously undertake 
to do some of this work at times when they are not engaged 
in regular employment? 



Avocational Education 125 

The identical considerations that have secured voca- 
tional training for our school systems will apply to 
avocational education. In the first place, we are con- 
fronted with the same facts with reference to the necessity 
for special training for this service that existed a genera- 
tion ago with reference to industrial training. The same 
difficulties also exist for the one as for the other. Skill 
in a trade is acquired by application of the principles to 
that special work. The same is true of constructive 
social effort. The advocates of vocational education 
were confronted with the particular problem of providing 
additional equipment for the multiplicity of trades. The 
advocates of avocational education are confronted with 
the problem of providing additional courses that will 
function with reference to the variety of social activity. 
To prevent the misdirection of educational effort in voca- 
tional training, it has been necessary to give attention to 
vocational guidance. Avocational guidance will create 
a social problem that must accompany education for 
social service. The recognition of the need of vocational 
education created the problem of finding a place in the 
curriculum for it. This problem will accompany the 
recognition of the need for avocational education. The 
fact that we recognize these problems and have practically 
solved them with reference to vocational education will 
guide and help us in supplying a place for this new type 
of education. Avocational education will surely find a 
secure place in our educational system. 

This prophecy is supported by two facts: (i) The 
leisure class has gradually increased ntmierically until it 
comprehends most of mankind. This leisure does not 
come to all men to the same extent, but relatively all 
classes and conditions of men possess it. (2) The com- 
plexity of social life calls for intelligent efforts based upon 



126 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

specialized training. The very leisure that the indus- 
trial classes have acquired compels attention to the prob- 
lem of its wise direction. 

No complete conspectus of our social situation has been 
formulated. The reason is obvious. In the first place, the 
expansion of social needs is occurring so fast as to make such 
an exhibit obsolete in a very short time. In the second 
place, the task presents almost limitless divisions, sub- 
divisions, and correlations. Albion W. Small has prob- 
ably been most successful in this undertaking. In his 
General Sociology he has attempted to formulate the 
entire scope of social achievements as follows:^ 

1 . Achievement in Promoting Health. 

2. Achievement in Producing Wealth. 

3. Achievement in Harmonizing Human Relations. 

4. Achievement in Discovery and Spread of Knowledge. 

5. Achievement in the Fine Arts. 

6. Achievement in Religion. 

Professor Small goes further and attempts to fill in 
some of the details under each of these grand divisions, 
but he recognizes that it is far from complete. The 
student of social problems can at a glance see the necessity 
for adding many other details in this program, most of 
which have appeared since Professor Small wrote his 
book. The topics in many of Small's classifications 
suggest the importance of social technology. 

THE PLACE OF AVOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN OUR SCHOOL 

SYSTEM 

The recognition of the rightful place of this type of 
education is the surest way to secure the complete social- 
ization of educational aims. 



I Qeneral Sociology, p. 718. 



Avocational Education I2y 

John Dewey says: 

All the educational reformers following Rousseau have looked to 
education as the best means of regenerating society. They have 
been fighting against the feudal and pioneer notion that the reason 
for a good education was to enable your children and mine to get 
ahead of the rest of the community, to give individuals another 
weapon to use in making society contribute more to their purse 
and pleasure. They have believed that the real reason for develop- 
ing the best possible education was to prevent just this, by develop- 
ing methods which would give a harmonious development of all 
the powers. This can be done by socializing education, by making 
schools a real part of active life, not by allowing them to go their 
own way, shutting off all outside influences, and isolating them- 
selves. ^ 

This process of ** socializing education" by merely 
incorporating industrial subjects in the curricula of the 
public schools fails to recognize all the factors in the 
problem. The socializing process will be incomplete 
until three changes are effected: first, the subject matter 
must be altered and extended to give a social point of 
view; second, the teacher must constantly present the 
subject matter from the standpoint of its functioning 
values; third, the student must be made to realize more 
clearly the ends to be accomplished by the knowledge 
he acquires. 

Is the aim of all this discussion a plea for the addition 
of other subjects to the already overcrowded curriculum 
of our schools? This is a question that naturally arises 
at this point. For almost a generation we have heard 
of this problem, but a place has been found for industrial 
subjects in home economics. The colleges and universi- 
ties have been compelled to recognize the right of the 
secondary schools to adjust their course of study to meet 
local needs. The domination of the high schools of the 

^Schools of Tomorrow, p. 173. 



128 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

country by the higher institutions of learning through 
inelastic and arbitrary collegiate entrance requirements 
is rapidly passing away. The pragmatic test is being 
applied, and the subject that fails to meet this test is 
assured of a place in the dump-heap. The people who 
support the secondary schools are now demanding that 
their courses of study function with reference to local 
needs as well as prepare young men and women for 
collegiate training. 

The training for social effort in the local communities 
is now being recognized to be as worth}^ of recognition 
in the high school as industrial training. It should be 
recognized that the complementary nature of these activi- 
ties tends to preserve, to coordinate, and to unify the 
elements of the curriculum rather than needlessly to 
extend and to burden the curriculum. 

The professional classes are in need of avocational 
training to meet the social demands that will be placed 
upon them. Ministers need a technical knowledge of 
the application of social justice to industrial relations. 
Lawyers need to understand the principles of social 
legislation, and the conditions that make it necessary. 
Physicians are often called upon to serve on sanitary 
boards and to act as health officers — positions which 
require a knowledge of sociological principles and public 
health methods. Teachers are called upon to perform 
all kinds of social service, including religious work, civic 
improvement, and the direction of recreational activities. 
Most of these activities lie beyond the scope of the pro- 
fessional curricula. The men and women who desire to 
serve best must include in their educational training 
courses that relate to their professional careers. But a 
much larger recognition must be given to the problem 
than that of merely recognizing the social responsibilities 



Avocational Education I2g 

of the professional classes. Practically every man is now- 
expected to render a more or less direct sei-vice to his 
community. Therefore the high school must recognize 
its relation to this problem and prepare to meet it. Of 
course the demands will vary somewhat in different 
communities. The wise school officer will attempt to 
catalog the social activities of the community in which he 
serves, and he should attempt to formulate his high-school 
curriculum to meet the social requirements. Every com- 
munity has its religious work, its civic welfare organi- 
zations, its public boards of control, and its literary and 
aesthetic activities. In the larger communities these 
activities are greatly extended and multiplied. Courses 
in economics, political science, including civics and 
sociology, should find a place in every curriculum where 
these social needs are to be met. The influence of par- 
ticular organizations almost demands that the course of 
study provide a place for parliamentary procedure. 
Based upon these fundamental courses, such special 
courses should be provided as the community needs may 
suggest. "Never before," says Dewey, "did the work 
of one individual affect the welfare of others on such a 
wide scale as at present."^ 

This is the thesis that this discussion attempts to 
present and it is hoped that the argument presented 
will result in its recognition and acceptance. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. The recognition of Intermediate subjects as a basis for avo- 
cational high-school courses. 

2. The place of social science in the high-school curriculum. 

3. Methods of determining community demands for avocational 
courses. 

1 Op. cit., p. 344. 



1^0 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

4. The principle that determines the limits of special courses to 
meet avocational needs. 

5. The responsibility of the school for socialized efficiency. 

Further Readings 

Dewey, John. Schools of Tomorrow. E. P. Button & Co. 

Goldmark, Josephine. Fatigue and Efficiency. Survey Associates. 

Hollingsworth and Poffenberger. Applied Psychology. D. Apple- 
ton & Co. 

Kerschensteiner, Georg. Training for Citizenship. Rand McNally 
& Co. 

Sizer, James Peyton. The Commercialization of Leisure. Richard 
G. Badger. 

Smith, W. R. An Introduction to Educational Sociology. Hough- 
ton Mifflin Co. 

Veblen, T. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Macmillan. 

Ward, Lester F. Pure Sociology and Applied Sociology. Macmil- 
lan. 



CHAPTER IX 

NATURAL APTITUDES AND THEIR CONSCIOUS 
DIRECTION 

THE recognition of individual aptitudes is one of 
the growing tendencies in modern education. It 
is rather surprising that so little has been done to evaluate 
individual abilities and to direct them consciously into 
proper channels. If psychology in the near future shall 
enable us to discover means, or invent expedient tests, 
for the measurement of mental capacities, it will perform 
a service of inestimable value to the cause of education. 
There is a growing belief that the measurement of apti- 
tudes is not an impossible undertaking. Schneider in 
discussing this problem says: 

Every individual has certain broad characteristics and every 
type of work requires certain broad characteristics. The problem, 
then, is to state the broad characteristics, to devise a rational 
method to discover these characteristics (or talents) in individuals, 
to classify the types of jobs by the talents they require and to guide 
the youth with certain talents into the type of job which requires 
these talents. This is a big problem, but one possible of measurable 
solution, or, at worst, possible of a solution immeasurably superior 
to our present haphazard methods. ^ 

On the pathological side, social demand that the defect- 
ives be housed in separate institutions has developed 
some tests of mental ability. On the other hand, the 
abnormal as well as the subnormal mind has been studied 
to some extent. But the individual differences in average 
mental types have received scanty consideration up to 
the present time. Little account has been taken of 
interests and of instinctive and emotional qualities. 

1 H. Schneider, "Selecting Young Men for Particular Jobs," Bulletin 7, Nationa 
Association of Corporation Schools. 



1^2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

Aptitudes are factors in the adaptability of pupils to 
subject matter in courses of study as a means of qualifying 
them for congenial vocational endeavors. 

Individuality is both a mental and a physical phe- 
nomenon. Like mental traits are no more common than 
like physical traits. Thomdike has repeatedly told us 
that a typical mind is a fiction. We have long known 
that there was no physical type. Eunoia, or right- 
mindedness, is a term designed to convey the idea of 
high mental normality. The term implies strong will, 
good memory power, vivid imagination, and logical 
reasoning. But this type mind is not delegated by 
nature to groups of individuals. Exact duplication of 
such a mental type does not actually exist. On the other 
hand, deviation from, and endless modification of, this 
hypothetical mental type give individuality to mentality, 
which is as obvious as individuality in physical life. The 
change in the point of view in modern psychology from 
the consideration of the subjective state of mind to that 
of the study of human behavior has tended to magnify 
the importance of these individual differences. 

The causes of mental variability are not to be ignored 
in a consideration of the nature and amount of it. In a 
general way we have recognized that these differences 
may be traced to heredity, sex, race, age, physical endow- 
ments, normal or retarded physical and mental develop- 
ment, and various environmental influences. This knowl- 
edge enables the teacher to know what differences are 
due to causes beyond social control and what differences, 
on the other hand, are traceable to causes that can be 
removed or modified if they tend to retard mental develop- 
ment. 

An interesting theory is that the mental development 
of each individual passes through all the stages of idiocy, 



National Aptitvides and their Conscious Direction ijj 

imbecility, weak-mindedness, normal intelligence, and 
even superior mentality, if not arrested by some counter- 
acting influence.^ This is analogous to the old theory 
of recapitulation and cannot be supported by many 
substantiating facts. But it deserves further considera- 
tion as a source of information relating to the causes of 
individual differences. 

Whatever may be the causes and infinite variability 
in individual mental differences, we must not overlook 
the fact that it is important to classify, or group, indi- 
viduals on the basis of conformity to, or variation from, 
a relative normality. For purposes of general classifi- 
cation we may consider three groups, as follows: 

I. The subnormal or defective group. There is a rela- 
tively small group whose mental disabilities outweigh 
their abilities. These are so deficient in aptitudes that 
they cannot adjust themselves satisfactorily to environ- 
mental conditions. This class is easy to recognize as a 
rule because variations are so extreme as to make their 
behavior contrast with the behavior of the more nearly 
normal types. For purposes of classification we may 
recognize two subclasses of the defective group : (a) those 
whose normal behavior is extreme, as in the case of the 
feeble-minded; (6) those whose behavior is relatively 
normal except at irregular intervals, as in the case of 
epileptics. There are many other mental defectives, and 
the study of abnormal psychology has contributed much 
to our understanding of the problems and possibilities 
of the members of this class. Separate institutions in 
all ages since the beginning of the Christian era have 
been provided for some of the mental defectives. As we 
have come to understand the differences in the members 

I See Chancellor, "The Adult Hypermoron," New England Journal of Education, 
February 14, 1918. 



IJ4 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

of this group, differentiated institutions have been estab- 
Hshed for the care of those belonging to this class. Social 
agencies have not yet recognized the full significance of 
individual differences existing among those composing 
this group. Educational methods must be readjusted to 
the end that any latent aptitudes or abilities that exist 
may be recognized and made to function properly. We 
have just begun to understand that many of our mentally 
defective people have often been misunderstood, neg- 
lected, and mistreated. There are undeveloped oppor- 
tunities for the study of abnormal psychology that should 
challenge the best intellects of the race in developing and 
recognizing latent possibilities and potential talents in 
the mentally defective, many of whom are now being 
unscientifically grouped with other unfortunate classes 
where their mental powers are gradually being atrophied. 
2. The supernormal class. In recent years educators 
have been giving attention to the children with exceptional 
mental endowments — children whose aptitudes far exceed 
their disabilities. The problem of training this class has 
been met in various ways — notably by grouping them in 
segregated classes and giving them superior advantages. 
This group has been sorely mistreated by the lock-step 
method of group instruction. Latent aptitudes have 
been neglected and emerging talents have been submerged 
in the floods of a pedagogical fiction known as "class 
average." The contention is not made that the excep- 
tional child possesses a type mind that justifies class 
grouping. Individual differences should be recognized 
here as well as in other classes that are grouped accord- 
ing to mental responses. The fact is that superior men- 
tality indicates marked individuality, and group instruc- 
tion becomes less desirable, on the whole, than in the case 
of the more nearly normal-minded. It is not only 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction IJS 

important to recognize the richly endowed child, but it is 
equally important to differentiate the talents that are 
manifested. With due consideration the normal develop- 
ing of those talents should be recognized and stimulated 
under the most favorable conditions. 

3. The normal-minded. A study of mental processes 
and reactions (behavior) presents the obvious fact that 
between these extremes (subnormal and supernormal) we 
have the mentally efficient whose abilities offset their 
disabilities by a safe margin. In regard to aptitudes the 
majority of individuals approximate an average mentality. 
The number of individuals decreases as we diverge from 
the average in the direction both of the supernormal and 
of the subnorjnal. By "average" is meant those whose 
mental reactions in the normal affairs of life are such as 
not to leave the impression of being peculiar or unusual. 
The public-school teacher is largely concerned with the 
child that displays no marked idiosyncrasies or obvious 
mental defects. The organization and the program of 
study in our public-school systems at present nowhere 
offer opportunity for any definite study of the apti- 
tudes of the individual child. The average teacher 
is not impressed with the importance of such a study. 
Our educational system emphasizes grades based upon 
responses, either oral or written, to questions based 
upon subjects selected for another purpose. The teacher 
is required to preserve these grades in formal records at 
the end of the year as the child progresses and passes 
from course to course or from grade to grade. These 
records consist of more or less inaccurate data, depending 
on the care and judgment of the teacher who made them. 
These records have been of little use to the student, his 
parents, or the college authorities as a means of directing 
the individual to a choice of professional courses. At 
10 



Ij6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

most they simply indicate that the pupil has completed 
a definite amount of work in a more or less satisfactory 
way. A student of educational problems must know- 
that this information is not of great value. There is no 
actual correlation between the high averages of the stu- 
dent in the high school and in the subsequent courses of 
the professional school. On the other hand, if the student 
should unwisely select a professional school course for 
which he was poorly adapted, it is likely that his collegiate 
grades will be relatively low, although his high school 
averages were high. If there is no correlation then 
between high-school and collegiate records for the single 
individual, what is the object of devoting so much time 
and effort to the accimiulating of grades during the 
progress of the pupil through the lower schools? What 
is the practical value of these records other than to show 
that the student has met a certain arbitrary standard 
that entitles him to promotion, or finally to graduate 
from high school? After all, does not the average teacher 
know without these formal grades whether pupils have 
appropriated a sufficient amount of information to entitle 
them to promotion without the expenditure of a large 
amount of energy and time in the tabulation of the large 
ntunber of grades that she is silently aware are not very 
accurate ? Would it not be more in harmony with modem 
tendencies in education to use the time devoted to tabu- 
lating grade records in formulating data on aptitudes 
and defects that manifest themselves in behavior that 
grows out of the reactions to subject matter, and in coor- 
dinating effort in class tests and playground activities? 
It is certainly true that this information would be more 
useful to the child in determining the direction of future 
activities than we can reasonably expect the present grade 
system to be. Of course due allowance must be made 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction ij^ 

for inaccuracies of judgment on the part of the individual 
teacher. 

It is not contended that every teacher is totally indif- 
ferent or unaware of mental traits that manifest them- 
selves in the progress of class instruction. Obviously the 
extent of this information depends upon the teachers* 
power of observation, their personal interests in their 
pupils, and the accuracy of their judgments. But rela- 
tively little importance is attached to the information 
acquired, and no facilities have been provided for pre- 
serving these facts for teachers of subsequent grades. 
A record made up of the conclusions reached by a teacher 
who is in more or less intimate contact with the pupil 
through several months of instruction and containing 
estimates of the child's aptitudes and disabilities would 
certainly be of more value to new teachers to whom the 
students were sent for more advanced instruction than 
a list of grades of doubtful accuracy and validity. It is 
recognized that information based upon subjective tests 
is more difficult to acquire accurately than objective data 
based upon the child's oral or written productions. It 
is also recognized that standardization is more difficult 
with subjective data than with objective data, but the 
problem is not one of relative difficulties, but of relative values. 
Granted that the information acquired is as likely to be 
inaccurate as grades, which is doubtless true, it would 
still appear to be more important for new teachers to 
know mental qualities than objective grades based on 
varying standards of instruction. 

None of the public-school records with which the 
authors are familiar provides any space whatever for 
observation relating to mental traits. Some of the 
printed record blanks contain space for "remarks," but 
no direction is given as to what kind of remarks is desired 



Ij8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and this part of the record is usually left blank. The 
scanty information that may have been obtained by the 
teacher, therefore, is totally lost. The most intrinsic 
knowledge relating to the child is dissipated through 
faulty records and failure to appreciate the significance 
of this type of data. 

The inadequacy of the present system may be more 
fully appreciated by visualizing a typical schoolroom 
situation. Suppose that twenty pupils compose a class 
group. This group has been brought together as a result 
of having previously met certain standards of knowledge 
with reference to certain prescribed subject matter. The 
daily schedule comprises instruction in arithmetic, gram- 
mar, history, spelling, reading, and writing. In the 
course of time and experience the teacher observes the 
following: (i) Two children merely drag along, yet they 
do not appear unusually dull or stupid. (2) Four students 
show interest and ability in arithmetic and limited interest 
and ability in grammar and spelling. (3) Eight other 
pupils in the group show limited capacity to learn grammar 
and to correlate the facts of history. In other words, they 
complain that grammar and history are hard for them. 
(4) The remainder of the group make reasonable progress 
in all of the subjects and apparently reveal no conspicu- 
ous defects in any of them. With varying details and 
numbers this is a situation that confronts every teacher, 
but as we approach the deeper aspects of the problem 
we see that the difficulties of the situation vary widely 
and minutely between the members of the group. For 
example, between two pupils doing reasonably well in 
arithmetic one is more apt in mechanical work or pro- 
cesses of analysis, while the other is more apt in the 
thought-processes of stated problems. As we study the 
class group an unlimited number of questions deserving 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction ijq 

consideration present themselves. For example: Is there 
any correlation between arithmetical analysis and gram- 
matical analysis? Is it possible to carry over apparent 
aptitudes in one subject to another subject, especially 
where these processes are similar? These and many 
similar questions test the astuteness of the teacher 
in developing and determining talents and aptitudes of 
students. These are examples of many subtle questions 
that ordinary observation will not reveal. Their revela- 
tion requires special methods and trained observers. 
This points the way for the recognition of scientific 
educational diagnosis that may be used to supplement 
the observations of the discerning teacher. Much greater 
success will come to educational effort when we learn to 
make scientific observations by the use of intelligent 
methods. 

CLASSIFICATION OF NATIVE ENDOWMENTS 

This discussion implies a revelation of certain funda- 
mental quahties of mind and heart. Education is based 
upon the recognition of native endowments. They may 
be grouped roughly as follows: (i) social endowments, 
(2) temperamental qualities, (3) mentality, (4) vital 
force, (5) aptitudes. These qualities not only differ 
widely in different individuals, but in intricate combina- 
tions they vitalize human life with forces of endless 
possibilities. The expression of these forces is known as 
human behavior, which is the means which the psycholo- 
gist is now using to interpret the strength of mentality. 
No process of education or exertion can increase them 
beyond nature's allowance. Education is not creation. 
It is revelation and direction. President Wilson has 
written a little book that he calls When a Man Comes to 
Himself. He maintains that "a man comes to himself 



140 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

when he has found the best that is in life, and has satisfied 
his heart with the highest achievements he is fit for. It 
is only then that he knows of what he is capable and 
what his heart demands."^ 

In another connection in the same volume he says 
that "men come to themselves by discovering their 
limitations no less than by discovering their deeper 
endowments and the mastery that will make them 
happy." ^ President Wilson takes the precaution to 
state that not all men come into full possession of nature's 
endowment, and he also declares that there is no fixed 
time in a man's life when he becomes aware of the full 
possession of these powers. He has presented here a 
remarkable revelation of the relation of nature to nurture^ 
in mental development. 

In passing it may be worth while to define the factors 
that compose human endowments. 

1. Social endowments include those attributes that 
reflect the qualities of social action. They originate in 
the gregarious instincts,^ and manifest themselves in 
many ways. Men differ widely in these talents. Some 
men by their personality attract and fascinate while 
others repel and disgust. Both sociality and anti-sociality 
are real qualities. 

2. Temperament has been defined by Ladd as "any 
marked type of mental constitution and development 
which seems due to inherited characteristics of the bodily 
organism." Psychologists have classified temperament 
as sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and sentimental, with 

ip. II. 

2 p. 23. 

3 "Nurture" is used here to convey the idea that not only formal instruction, 
but all the experiences of life help to reveal to a man the extent of his talents as 
well as the limitations of his ability. 

*See McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 84. 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction 141 

all possible combinations of these. It is generally con- 
sidered that mental qualities are largely predetermined 
by physical qualities. Sex, age, and race are factors in 
temperament.^ Outstanding attributes of feeling, will, 
or imagination control conduct and explain motives in 
relatively pure types. The physical characteristics have 
neutralized outstanding qualities in what is called the 
balanced temperament. 

3. Mentality is the familiar phenomenon that deter- 
mines responses to stimuli and results in reactions that 
we call behavior. Every teacher is familiar with the 
wide differences in the mental alertness of children. If 
we assume a uniformity between mental activity and the 
exercise of brain-function, the same differences exist. 
The amount of disposable energy in the brain at any 
time is far from being a constant quantity. The extremes 
are represented by the idiot on the one hand and the 
genius on the other, with endless gradations in mental 
responses between these extreme types. The teacher 
has no power to increase mentality, but, assuming a 
maximum mentality for each individual, it is the teacher's 
problem to invent devices and to use methods that will 
transform all the latent mental energy of the child into 
conscious potential energy. The stereotyped curriculum 
is the teacher's greatest handicap in dealing with this 
problem. There is little opportunity, under the prevail- 
ing system of instruction, to meet the requirements of 
mental deficiencies and to contribute to the mental 
needs of each member of a class group. 

4. Vital force is the physiological factor that reacts 
upon all the mental qualities. Vitality is as valuable a 
quantity as mentality. Their interdependence is well 
understood. The degrees of vital energy range from 

iSee Dester and Garlick, Psychology in the School Room, pp. 432-345. 



142 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

the listless anaemic on the one hand to the red-blooded, 
energized child on the other. Proper food, air, sunshine, 
and exercise may increase vitality to the limit of nature's 
allowance. But heredity plays an important part here, 
and, after all is done, marked differences will still exist 
that baffle educational effort. 

5. Aptitudes. We may have those natural tendencies 
that give response to effort in one direction with greater 
ease than that manifested in another direction. Their 
recognition is the supreme task of the conscientious 
teacher. That special aptitudes exist is no longer a 
theoretical question. That they are capable of direction 
is equally a matter of common knowledge. The whole 
field of our statistical measurements in educational 
psychology has grown out of the recognition of this 
supreme educational factor.^ 

THE VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE OF YOUTH 

The study of special aptitudes is a logical step in the 
program for vocational education. Interest in vocational 
education has greatly enlarged the scope of educational 
endeavor. This movement has compelled ovir school 
forces to appraise the social significance of vocational 
life and to consider the adaptability of children to 
particular careers. We must recognize the efforts at 
vocational guidance as the effects of the movement for 
vocational education. 

The position of vocational counselor is a new vocation 
that is destined to increase in importance. Bloomfield 
declares that "until society faces the question of the life 
careers of its youths, the present vocational anarchy will 
continue to beset the young work seekers."^ This 

1 See Bronner, The Psychology of Special Abilities and Disabilities (1917) ; Wells. 
Mental Adjustments (1917) ; and Rollings worth, Vocational Psychology (1916). 

^The Vocational Guidance of Youth. 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction 14J 

declaration must be obvious to every thoughtful student 
of educational problems. But before substantial prog- 
ress can be made, the entire school system must give 
recognition to the importance of the task and the validity 
of the undertaking. This will mean that the curricula 
must be formulated on a new basis. The old question 
of what knowledge is of most worth must have a new 
meaning and it must be answered in the light of new 
conditions. This is a radical departure in educational 
practice, and its adoption would greatly modify the 
established curricula in present-day schools. 

We would not undertake to close this discussion without 
a more emphatic intimation of the contribution that the 
schools are now making to the recognition of aptitudes 
and their conscious direction. Here and there a school 
system has begun in a concrete way to formulate means 
and to adopt devices that will reveal to teachers and school 
officials the mental qualities of children. An interesting 
example of such a school system is that of Pomona, 
California. Superintendent G. Vernon Bennett has 
worked out a rather promising plan of determining apti- 
tudes and abilities. This experiment began in 19 14 by 
the appointment of a member of the high-school faculty 
as vocational adviser, the first position of the kind in a 
high school, perhaps, in this country. Mr. L. W. Bartlett, 
who was appointed to this position, outlines the aims of 
his work as follows: 

1 . To stimulate the vocation-motive as a directive force through- 
out the entire school life of the pupil. 

2. To give the pupil a grasp of the field of vocations, and the 
social and economic aspect of each. 

3. To encourage the pupil to discover his powers and possibilities 
with a view to investing them. 

4. To help him in the selection of a vocation, and in his choice 
of subjects in preparation for that vocation. 

5. To assist him in making the start in life. 



144 Present Day Tendencies in Edttcation 

The complete plan is outlined in a pamphlet entitled 
Vocational Guidance in Pomona City Schools. The plan 
comprehends a study of children from the kindergarten 
through the high school. The kindergarten supervisor 
explains : 

In the kindergartens, vocational guidance begins with the dis- 
covery of a child's attitude toward any activity or occupation. 
Free conversations reveal his interests, how far he understands 
what he sees and hears, and enable the kindergartner to explain 

or correct impressions Interest in and appreciation of trade 

life show in conversation, imitations of trade activities, and real but 
simple work with the tools and materials of that trade. The group 
visits the carpenter, inspects his shop, describes his work and 
materials, imitates his movements, and then builds a shop, a house, 
models tools, and plays carpenter. 

The same idea with varying details is carried through 
the primary, intermediate, and high-school grades. The 
mental reactions of children to such activities as school 
gardens, manual training, geography, and history are 
observed in the primary grades, and in the intermediate 
school recognition is given to the marked mental and 
physical changes that the pupil undergoes and his rest- 
less and sensitive reactions resulting from these changes. 
A wider choice of manual activity is provided, including 
sewing and cooking, art, music, bookkeeping, woodwork, 
printing, general science, and mechanical drawing. 

In the transition from the intermediate to the high 
school a very important element is added in the Pomona 
schools. A class in vocational information and guidance 
is organized. The aim of this class is to furnish the 
pupil information about the requirements and possi- 
bilities of the various vocations, including their social 
and civic relations and the relative advantages and 
disadvantages of each. The suggested readings of the 
high school emphasize particular subjects that qualify 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction 145 

for a vocation and are largely based upon many of the 
activities that begin in the elementary school. 

Through later school years the children are studied 
from the standpoint of their home environment and 
the interests that they reveal outside of school work. 
They visit various industries under the direction of the 
teacher, and the interest manifested by each pupil is 
carefully noted. Teachers are urged to cultivate a 
knowledge of their pupils through conversation and 
playground activities. 

The card system is used for record purposes. Several 
different kinds of record cards are used. One card relates 
to the child's home environment, including the use of 
his spare time, his outside reading, and the special interests 
and aptitudes revealed in the informal relations of the 
home. Another card contains a record of qualities 
observed, such as attentive or inattentive, courteous or 
discourteous, initiative or passive, kind or cruel, perse- 
vering or weak-willed, etc. Another card is headed 
"types" and calls for records with reference to elements 
of leadership, originality, and other type activities. 

While the experiment referred to is the most advanced 
and definite one that has been made in this direction, it 
should not be overlooked that in a less formal way the 
movement is recognized by many other schools. The 
elaborate system of grading by which the child is pro- 
moted or demoted, advanced or retarded, dropped or 
passed, is a means of testing the abilities or disabilities, 
interest or indifference, mental alertness or dullness. 
This process of selection, identification, and elimination 
goes on ceaselessly from the kindergarten to the uni- 
versity, but there are three obvious defects in the present 
plan that seem to require discussion: (i) In the first 
place, the system has been devised for another purpose, 



146 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and the benefits and information supplied are merely 
incidental and useless. (2) In the second place, the 
information is not detailed enough to be of the best use 
as a guide to vocational effort. (3) In the third place, 
the aptitudes revealed are too limited in number to 
serve as a basis of study of important correlations. For 
example: What relation exists between the early success 
in elementary subjects and the later success in handling 
more advanced subjects ? Or what relation exists between 
high-school averages and the averages in the various 
years of the college? Or what is the relation between 
honors received in college and recognition in later life 
in such volumes as Who's Who? Or what is the relation 
between school standing and salary-earning in later life? 

CONCLUSION 

The tendencies in education to evaluate abilities and 
disabilities of children offer great promise in education. 
Psychology at last is to find application in the revelation 
of behavior. Individual responses are to have recognized 
meaning. They are to be measured and weighed in the 
light of the stimuli that produced them. When sufficient 
evidence is accumulated to justify a reasonable con- 
clusion, a life interest will be established that will give 
to the individual reasonable expectation of efficient 
service and satisfactory employment. We must recog- 
nize that education has not done enough for any pupil if 
it finally fails to reveal to him his particular capacities 
and aptitudes. It is none the less the duty of the school 
to develop his social endowments, temperament, mentality, 
and vitality to their full capacities. It is not unreason- 
able for the pupil at the end of his school career to demand 
a charted record of his abilities and disabilities as revealed 
through his continuous school career. Certainly such a 



National Aptitudes and their Conscious Direction 14^ 

chart, after due allowance is made for inaccuracy of judg- 
ment, would be more valuable than a transcript of inaccu- 
rate grades and a Latin diploma that he cannot read. 

But society has a higher right than the individual to 
demand this information for each pupil. It is to the 
interest of society that men and women be as well adapted 
to life careers as possible and, consequently, that as few 
as possible be ill-adapted to vocational activities. Again, 
the accumulated results of the intensive observations of 
individuals give us important information relating to 
groups. Individual diagnosis of mentality offers untold 
possibilities for the sociologist. 

We may reasonably expect increased interest in the 
aspect of education under discussion. An important 
beginning has already been made. Many studies will 
be made and many devices will be invented looking to 
a more definite formulation of a system for accurately 
determining the latent possibilities of individual life. 
What is now only an ill-defined program will in time 
become an important applied science. The achievements 
of the early years of this century in this important aspect 
of education give the assurance of the fulfillment of a 
prophecy made by an earnest inquirer in this particular 
field: "The nineteenth century witnessed an extra- 
ordinary increase in our knowledge of the material world, 
and in our power to make it subservient to our ends: 
the twentieth century will probably witness a correspond- 
ing increase in our knowledge of human nature, and in 
our power to use it for our welfare." 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Modification of standard curriculum necessary to give con- 
scious direction to study of abilities and disabilities. 

2. Information cards — data and form — for term reports on 
abilities and disabilities. 



148 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

3. Methods of checking up the abilities and disabilities of the 
abnormal child. The subnormal child. 

4. Element of variability likely to appear in the transition 
(a) from the first to the second grade; {b) from the first year to 
the last year of the high school; (c) from the high school to the 
college. 

5. Classification of abiHties on the basis of vocational reqmre- 
ments. 

Further Readings 

Bloomfield, M. The Vocational Guidance of Youth. Houghton 
Mifflin Co. 

Brewster, Edwin Tenney. Vocational Guidance for the Professions. 
Rand McNally & Co. 

Bronner, Augusta F. The Psychology of Special A hilities and Dis- 
abilities. Little, Brour & Co. 

Dickinson, Marguerite Stockman. Vocational Training for Girls 
Rand McNally & Co. 

Hollingsworth, H. L. Vocational Psychology. D. Appleton & Co. 

Hollingsworth and Poffenberger, Applied Psychology. D. Appleton 
& Co. 

Jastrow, J. Character and Temperament. D. Appleton & Co. 

Puffer, J. Adams. Vocational Guidance — The Teacher as a Counse- 
lor. Rand McNally & Co. 

Schneider, H. "Selecting Young Men for Particular Jobs," Bulletin 
7, National Association of Corporation Schools. 

Thomdike, E. L. Educational Psychology, Vol. Ill, Part 2; also 
Mental and Social Measurements. 

Wells, F. L. Mental Adjustments. D. Appleton & Co. 

Whitley, M. T. Tests for Individual Differences. Science Press. 



CHAPTER X 
EDUCATION AND PRAGMATISM 

PRAGMATISM has been brought to the aid of 
most of the philosophies of Hfe. The affiHations 
of pragmatism have been an interesting theme for many 
of the philosophers of recent times. Pragmatism has 
been brought to the defense of religion.^ Its relation to, 
and influence on, rationalism and idealism have been 
ably discussed by Professor Caldwell.^ Most of the 
other formulated philosophical concepts have been asso- 
ciated in recent years with pragmatism. This is not 
surprising in view of the claims of pragmatism. It has 
promised much as a means of removing "speculative 
remoteness" and uncertain implications from many 
questions of deep human concern. In the light of its 
promises and the possibilities of its method, it is rather 
surprising that pragmatism has not been associated with 
education and the pragmatic test applied to educational 
theory. 

Two questions arise at once with reference to the 
application of pragmatism to educational policies: (i) 
Has education a pragmatic basis? (2) Has education 
been consciously influenced by the pragmatic movement 
in philosophy? Before we answer the first question we 
must refer briefly to the meaning of pragmatism as 
presented by its leading advocates in recent philosophical 
literature. 

Pragmatism comprehends both (i) a method and (2) a 

1 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pratt, What Is Pragmatism? 
chapter v, "Pragmatism and Religion." 

2 Caldwell, Pragmatism and Idealism. 

149 



i§o Present Day Tendencies in Education 

genetic theory of truth. "Pragmatism," according to 
Professor Dewey, "is a temper of mind, an attitude; it 
is also a theory of the nature of ideas and truth; and 
finally it is a theory about reality."^ James is careful 
to keep the idea of method and the idea of the theory 
of knowledge distinct in presenting his conception of 
pragmatism. He says: "The pragmatic method is pri- 
marily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that 
otherwise might be interminable."^ James follows this 
statement with the following suggestion with reference 
to its application to a practical problem: "The prag- 
matic method in such cases is to try to interpret each 
notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. 
What difference would it practically make to anyone if 
this notion rather than that notion were true?"^ The 
advocates lay great stress on the "attitude of orienta- 
tion," which James explains as ''the attitude of looking 
away from first things, principles, categories, supposed 
necessities, and looking toward last things, fruits, conse- 
quences, facts.'' '^ This statement is strictly in accord 
with the ideas of Mr. C. S. Pierce, who was the first to 
use the word "pragmatism." He expresses the idea in 
these words: "Consider what effects which might con- 
ceivably have practical bearings we consider the object 
of our conception to have. Then oiir conception of 
these effects is the whole of our conception of the objects." * 
The pragmatic philosophers will lay emphasis on two 
words — ' ' practical ' ' and * ' consequences . ' ' Popini is 
quoted by Pratt as saying that the "meaning of theories 
consists uniquely in the consequences which those who 

i"What Does Pragmatism Mean by Practical?" Jour, of Phil., v, 85. 
2 William James, Pragmatism, p. 45. 
3William James, Pragmatism, p. 45. 

4 Ibid., p. 54. 

5 "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," Popular Science Monthly, XII, 283. 



Education and Pragmatism 151 

believe them true may expect from them."^ Professor 

Schiller elaborates this idea as follows: "To say that a 

truth has consequences and that what has been done is 

meaningless, means that it has a bearing upon some 

human interest. * Its consequences ' must be consequences 

to some one for some purpose. If it is clearly grasped that 

the * truth * with which we are concerned is truth for man 

and that the 'consequences' are human too, it is really 

superfluous to add either that the consequences must be 

practical or that they must be good."^ James did not 

regard practical as ** superfluous" but as essential in the 

application of the pragmatic method, but his idea of the 

meaning of the word "practical" is more comprehensive 

than some who have criticized this philosophy have 

realized. He makes it clear that the word is not restricted 

to a merely utilitarian meaning. He reminds us that the 

word is derived from the Greek word that means "action" 

and from which we derive our words "practice" and 

"practical."^ In another connection^ he explains that 

practical means to him particular or concrete. Schiller 

attempts to prevent a too narrow application of the word 

by reminding us that "all consequences are practical 

sooner or later." Critics of pragmatic philosophy have 

attacked this statement on the ground that if Schiller 

is correct the word "practical" loses its significance when 

it is used to define pragmatism. But what Schiller had 

in mind was a recognition of the relation of theory to 

practice. To the pragmatic philosophers hypothesis, 

theories, and laws are mere formulas expressing relative 

truth or truths in generalizations that more or less 



1 What Is Pragmatism? p. 22. 
''i Studies in Humanism, p. 5. 
^Pragmatism, p. 46. 
^Journal of Philosophy, I, 674. 

11 



1^2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

accurately predict evidences which may or will verify 
them. It is in this sense that Schiller regards conse- 
quences as "practical sooner or later." 

Before passing to the specific answers to the questions 
raised it may be well to call attention to another term 
that has been used both as the forerunner of the term 
pragmatism and by recent writers as synonymous with 
pragmatism, i. e., the word "humanism." This word 
was first used by Professor Schiller, who may be regarded 
as the father of the modern pragmatic movement in 
philosophy. He defines the term as "the perception 
that the philosophic problem conceives human beings 
striving to comprehend a world of htiman experience by 
the resources of human minds. "^ He emphasizes this 
point of view in philosophy by declaring that "man's 
complete satisfaction shall be the conclusion philosophy 
must aim at."^ He explains that by "human" is meant 
"human experience." "Pragmatism and humanism," 
says Driscoll, "are terms designating the same thing, 
e. g., human experience, considered under different view- 
points. Pragmatism sets forth a method of thought; 
humanism accepts this method, bu{ lays special stress on 
its content."^ Schiller recognizes the content element in 
pragmatic philosophy, but he contends that humanism is 
more comprehensive than pragmatism. "Pragmatism," 
he says, "will see a special application of humanism to the 
theory of knowledge," which means that humanism implies 
"the expansion of pragmatism." Humanism there- 
fore, involves "a method applicable universally to 
ethics, to aesthetics, to metaphysics, and to theology, to 
every concern of man, as well as to the theory of 

^Ibid. p. 

^ Ibid., -p. 13. 

3 Pragmatism and the Problem of the Idea. 



Education and Pragmatism 153 

knowledge."^ Schiller's distinctions, however, fade away 
in the larger interpretations given to pragmatic philosophy 
by James, Dewey, and others. But the use of both terms 
is significant in the development of this philosophy, for 
hiimanism has been used to emphasize the content, and 
pragmatism the method. This subject matter has been 
given the definite content of what is human as revealed 
in experience. The method has been applied to the 
examination of this experience by looking to the "practi- 
cal consequences" resulting from a practical experience 
or group of experiences. 

Reverting to the questions raised with reference to the 
pragmatic basis of education, it would appear that an 
affirmative answer must be given to the first question. 
Education as conceived and directed in this country 
has a pragmatic philosophy behind it. Perhaps a nega- 
tive answer must be given as to the conscious influence 
of pragmatic philosophy upon education, but this does 
not indicate that educational theories and methods have 
not, nevertheless, been definitely influenced by pragmatic 
philosophy. An attempt will be made to support these 
answers by tracing the application of pragmatism 
through American ideals as reflected in educational theory 
and practice. 

AMERICANISM AND PRAGMATISM 

Before passing to the influence of pragmatism on 
education it would be worth while to observe that prag- 
matic philosophy has flourished in the United States. 
Its influence has been less noticeable even in England, 
where it first received modern consideration. Attention 
has been called to Dewey's definition of pragmatism as 
"a temper of mind, an attitude." There is much in 

^Studies in Humanism, p. i6. 



154 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the attitude of mind of the American people that makes 
pragmatism an attractive philosophy. Americanism and 
pragmatism are interrelated in that the spiritualizing 
power of the nation has been given expression by the 
motive and method of this philosophy. 

Americanism is universally associated with certain 
outstanding qualities that reflect a pragmatic philosophy. 
Contemporaneous American life manifests an abiding 
faith in practicality and efficiency. These ideals are 
expressed in belief in work — not for its own sake, but 
for "the practical consequences" that result from it. 
Americanism is universally associated with "action" and 
the self -directive efforts of the individual. This has given 
expression in various ways to exaggeration, radicalism, 
individualism, and to an im warranted optimism,^ but 
underl3ring all these is an abiding faith in the value of 
experience and a belief in a creed or philosophy of life 
that really "works" when applied to practical situations. 
It would be almost possible to substitute the word prag- 
matism for Americanism in David Jayne Hill's explana- 
tion of what Americanism is, in his book Americanism: 
What It Is: "It is positive, constructive. It starts 
with the idea that the human individual has an intrinsic 
value. It holds that he has an inherent right to bring 
to fruition all his native powers and to enjoy the fruits 
of his efforts. His real value lies not in what he has, 
but in what he is and may become; and he may become 
anything his capacities and his achievements may enable 
him to be." 2 

This conception of Americanism is the supreme justi- 
fication for educational opportunity for all children at 
public expense, and at the same time it is himianistic 

iSee Bliss Perry; The American Mind. 
^Americanism: What It Is, Preface, p. 9. 



Education and Pragmatism 155 

in content and pragmatic in method, or either or both of 
these if we conceive of them as synonymous and express- 
ing the idea of "intrinsic value," "inherent right," and 
a method of giving these qualities ample opportunity for 
expression. 

INFLUENCE ON EDUCATION 

Americanism as it is understood has been and is being 
largely reflected in educational theory and practice. 
Publicly supported institutions seek justification on these 
grounds. Criticism is constantly being directed at our 
educational system because it fails in this or that par- 
ticular to reflect some attribute of Americanism. These 
criticisms are constantly producing modifications and 
redirections in our educational practices. This in itself 
is pragmatic, for it is a frank recognition of relativism. 
Compromises are constantly being made in educational 
effort in the interests of social demands. The denial of 
the absolute and the recognition of the relative value, 
therefore, is a fundamental application of pragmatism 
to educational policy. 

Pragmatic philosophy was, as we would naturally 
expect, first reflected in American university life. We 
are all familiar with the changes in methods of instruction. 
The newer emphasis on the natural and social sciences, 
the laboratory methods of instruction, and the adjust- 
ment of educational material to means and ends have 
largely developed within a generation. We are all 
familiar with the preference for the concrete,^ rather 
than the abstract, the abhorrence of mere book-learning, 
intolerance for the doctrinaire, and the optimism reflected 
in our faith in Americanism. Every college and university 

1" The whole originality of pragmatism," says James, "the whole point in it, 
is its use of the concrete way of seeing. It begins with concreteness and returns 
and ends with it." 



Ij6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

in the land has been influenced by the change in 
attitude toward these factors. The multipHcation of 
courses in natural and social sciences and the relative 
number of graduate students that elect these courses 
reflect the influence of pragmatic interest and attitudes 
of mind. 

The elective system also reflects pragmatism in two 
ways: (i) The system looks to the practical consequences 
of instruction by attempting to adapt it to individual 
needs. (2) The elective system concentrates attention 
on the relative merits of methods of handling subject 
matter to the end that even the most theoretical teacher 
of the most impractical subject is compelled to look 
to "practical consequences" or he will soon find his 
classroom deserted and his courses ignored. We find the 
teachers of philosophy, mathematics, and the classics 
justifying their courses on utilitarian grounds, and in 
their classrooms attention is directed to a philosophical 
basis for political theory, to the application of pure 
mathematics to applied subjects; and Greek and Latin 
are taught as contributing factors to a clear knowledge 
of our own tongue rather than as a meaiis of better 
acquiring acquaintanceship with a foreign culture. 

The obvious truth of this assertion is easy to verify 
by reference to the outline of graduate courses offered 
by the departments of abstract science in our college 
and university catalogs. The tendency in the litera- 
ture of philosophy now is to discuss such topics as "A 
Recovery of Philosophy," "Reformation of Logic," 
"Intelligence and Mathematics," and "Value and Exist- 
ence."^ We are told that "even mathematics, long the 
pattern of absolute knowledge, has not escaped the stigma 
of relativity. Euclidean geometry is reduced to a useful 

ISee Dewey and Others, Creative Intelligence. 



Education and Pragmatism i^y 

interpretation of the data of experience; it is not theo- 
retically the only one. Its superior validity is dependent 
upon its use when applied to the physical world. Even 
mathematics, therefore, lend themselves to the philo- 
sophic inference drawn by Henri Bergson and others, that 
all conceptual systems of the human mind have a merely 
conditional truth, depending on the circumstances of 
their applications."^ 

That the reform of logic along with mathematics has 
been brought about by pragmatic philosphy is the best 
evidence of its profound influence on the subject matter 
taught in our schools and colleges. The publication in 
1890 of James's Principles of Psychology marked a new 
era in the subject matter of that science. Since that date 
the new tendency in psychology has profoundly influenced 
all the aspects of educational endeavor. An adequate 
appreciation of the influence of pragmatism on education 
would require, therefore, a consideration of the modi- 
fications in educational practices resulting from the 
influence of modem philosophy. It is most natural 
first to think of vocational education as the most obvious 
product of the pragmatic influence in American education. 
The whole movement of industrial education — which is 
a broader term than vocational education — gained head- 
way under the direction of pragmatic philosophers. The 
publication of John Dewey's The School and Society in 
1900 was an event of importance in our educational 
development. He tells us in this volume that "we must 
conceive of work with wood and material, of weaving, 
sewing, and cooking as methods of living, not as distinct 
studies."'^ This educational conception, although a 
radical utterance when expressed, becomes a commonplace 

1 D. L. Murray, Pragmatism, p. 5. 
^School and Society, p. 27. 



1^8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and would hardly be disputed by any reputable edu- 
cator. It was but a step from industrial education 
in general to vocational education in its more or less 
specific applications. It is an attempt completely to 
socialize education in the interest of both society and the 
individual. The justification for vocational education 
at public expense finds expression in pragmatic philoso- 
phy. When we are challenged to justify the increasing 
forces employed in education and the multiplication of 
courses necessary to meet the demands of vocational 
education, we apply the pragmatic test. What difference 
would it practically make to anyone if disciplinary educa- 
tion instead of vocational education should prevail? This 
is a pragmatic question and we apply to it the statement 
of James: "You must bring out of each word its practical 
value, set it at work within the stream of your experi- 
ence." If this is an insufficient test, we apply finally 
the test of tracing the notion (vocational education) to 
its "practical consequences." In our civilization* this 
not only has been a satisfactory answer to the educator, 
but it has been the means of opening the nation's treasury 
and making available enormous funds with which to 
carry on these processes. 

The vocational guidance movement which has grown 
out of the vocational education movement developed out 
of the pragmatic consciousness. Vocational guidance is 
distinctly a movement "looking toward last things, fruits, 
consequences, facts." These are only illustrations of the 
influence of pragmatic philosophy upon tendencies in 
modem education. The student of educational problems 
can easily catalog many other educational movements that 
can with equal assurance be traced to the influence of 
this philosophy on American life. It is not so important 
to test all the elements of this situation as it is to recognize 



Edtication and Pragmatism i^g 

the influence of pragmatism itself. The most valu- 
able answer that can come from applying the pragmatic 
test to educational theory is in the double assurance 
that such a method of philosophy applies the functioning 
test to theory and gives a formula for evaluating proposed 
innovations in education. The progressive teacher is 
constantly confronted with the decision of accepting an 
educational fad for an educational fact. It is always 
dangerous to dogmatize, and this is especially true in 
respect to problems of education. Pragmatism offers 
a means by which we can test out relative values by 
tracing them to their consequences. It therefore becomes 
an important guide to safe action in evaluating the 
proposals of educational changes. 

CONCLUSION 

A precaution seems to be necessary, however, in the 
application of pragmatism to educational practice. Rela- 
tive emphasis, as well as relative value, needs to receive 
consideration in the application of pragmatic philosophy 
to education. Professor William Caldwell of McGill 
University voices this precaution in the following words: 

Pragmatism is inclined in some ways to make too much of people's 
rights and interests, and too little of their duties and privileges and 
of their real needs and their fundamental, human instincts. It is 
in the understanding alone of these latter things that true wisdom 
and true satisfaction are to be found. And, like the American 
demand for pleasure and for a good time generally, pragmatism is 
in many respects too much a mere philosophy of " postulations " 
and "demands," too much a mere formulation of the eager and 
impetuous demands of the emancipated man and woman of the 
times — as forgetful as they of many of the deeper facts of life and 
of the economy of our human civilization. In demanding that the 
"consequences of all pursuits" (even those of study and philosophy) 
shall be "satisfying" and that philosophy shall satisfy our active 



i6o Present Day Tendencies in Education 

nature, it forgets the sense of disillusionment that comes to all 
rash and mistaken effort. i 

This precaution seems to be particularly pertinent at 
the present time. Educational practice has gone too far 
in some directions in attempting to comply with super- 
ficial demands of the times. It has caused some to 
challenge the honesty of our educational convictions and 
the validity of our methods. 

A few years ago we grew impatient and were inclined 
to answer hastily the child who asked us what good 
would come to him from the study of this or that subject. 
Gradually we have come to understand that this question 
must not only be answered for the child, but that we must 
answer it for ourselves if we are to teach the subject 
effectively. In the economy of social effort for all the 
future, educational organizations, educational questions, 
educational methods, as well as the content of courses 
of study in all the grades and classes of schools, must 
seek justification on the basis of the validity of the conse- 
quences that they produce. The time has come for us 
to recognize the influence of pragmatic philosophy on all 
the means, influences, and agencies in education. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. A revaluation of the subject matter of the high-school course 
of study in the light of pragmatic philosophy, 

2. Pedagogical methods and the pragmatic method. 

3. The psychological implications of pragmatism. 

4. The meaning of "creative intelligence." 

5. An outline of pragmatic elements in modern education. 

Further Readings 

Caldwell, William. Pragmatism and Idealism (19 13); Macmillan. 
Dewey, John. The Influence oj Darwinism^ and Other Essays (1910) ; 
Henry Holt & Co. 

1 Pragmatism and Idealism, p. 192. 



Edtication and Pragmatism i6i 

Dewey, John, and Others. Studies in Logical Theory (1903); 
University of Chicago Press. Creative Intelligence (19 17); 
Henry Holt & Co. 

James, William. Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways of 
Thinking (1907); A Pluralistic Universe (1909); The Meaning 
of Truth (1909); Some Problems of Philosophy (191 1); Radical 
Empiricism (19 12); The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in 
Popular Philosophy (1897); The Varieties of Religious Expe- 
rience (1902); Longmans, Green, & Co. 

Moore, A. W. Pragmatism and Its Critics (191 1). 

Murray, D. L. Pragmatism', Schiller. 

Pratt, James B. What Is Pragmatism? (1907); Macmillan. 



CHAPTER XI 
FREEDOM AND LAW 

ONE of the chief impediments to proper progress in 
educational principles has been our misconception 
of the relation between freedom and law. We have not 
been willing to give the child's individuality free play 
because we have feared that such freedom would result 
in license. We have been dominated so long by the idea 
that the teacher is the chief factor in the school, the abso- 
lute monarch whose word is law, that we have found 
little place for the child's freedom. In fact, in the average 
school, the child has little to do with either the work or 
the discipline of the school. His business is to do the 
work assigned him by the teacher, obey her orders, and 
ask no questions. He has been taught that his teacher 
is his master, his elders his superiors, and that he is a 
perverted, totally depraved creature who has no rights 
until he becomes a man. While we have had as our 
chief aim in the school the development of the child into 
a useful citizen, we have conducted our work in such a 
manner as to make him a slave rather than a self-active, 
free man. We have acted as though we thought that we 
could best train him for citizenship in a free republic 
by taking away from him all freedom during his training. 
We have forgotten that the ability to use freedom aright 
cannot be learned from books; it can be learned only in 
the practical school of experience. Here we have another 
example of the weakness of our educational system due 
to the overemphasis of books as means of education. It 
has caused us to overlook the fact that the school organism 
is the best possible means of training the boys and girls 

162 



Freedom and Law i6j 

in the principles of liberty and of giving them a proper 
attitude toward law. We have thought of the school 
merely as a means of coercing the child into doing what 
we want him to do and have not thought of it as a means 
of developing in him the ability to use freedom aright. 

Governor Whitman in his inaugural address to the 
New York legislature said that the greatest menace to 
this republic is the prevalent disregard for law, and this 
is just what we should expect when the people are trained 
under a system of education based on force. Such a 
system inculcates the wrong attitude in the pupil's mind 
toward the law, and when he leaves the school he of 
course takes this attitude with him and does not have 
the right attitude toward the law on the outside of the 
school. If pupils do not learn to respect law when in 
school, they will not respect it when they leave school. 
In the schools they become accustomed to looking upon 
it as hostile to their best interests; if they obey it, it is 
not because they love the law, but because they fear the 
consequences of disobedience. If grown men and women 
have any respect for the law of the land, it is not because 
they have gained that respect in the schools. Such an 
attitude was inculcated, more than likely, by law-abiding 
parents. 

The fact that the school organization is based on force 
leads not only to the lack of self-control with respect to 
law, but to other vices which are sapping away our 
vitality as a nation. We may cry out against the high 
cost of living from now until doomsday, but it will do 
no good unless we exercise more self-control and self- 
restraint in our methods of living. As some one has 
said, it is not the high cost of living that is troubling us; 
but it is the cost of high living. We are living high 
because the other fellow does. He has n't the self-control 



164 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

to restrain his desire for pleasure and display, and we 
have n't the self-control necessary to keep from aping 
him. 

TRAINING FOR FREEDOM 

We have made some progress in freedom in the realm 
of government, but this does not affect the individual 
until the battle with him is either lost or won. We 
have been clamoring for more liberty without seeming 
to realize that it is extremely important that we first 
know how to use such liberty aright, and, as a result, 
we have paid extremely dearly for it in most instances. 
We have failed to use the schools as we should have done 
in developing the pupil's self-control. It is very impor- 
tant that, if we are to train citizens for a republic, we 
regard the school as a miniature republic, where, under 
the direction of the teacher, the child learns not to abuse 
his liberties and attains a proper attitude, not only 
toward the school law, but toward law in general. While 
we should have used the school organization to develop 
in the child the habit of self-control, we have used it, as 
a matter of fact, to crush his individuality, and, as a 
result, when he goes out into the world where there is no 
teacher to control him, not having the proper attitude 
toward the law, he abuses his rights. 

Our attitude toward the child in his training is some- 
what similar to the attitude of some of our forefathers 
toward the common man of one hundred and fifty years 
ago. They believed that anarchy would result if he 
were given any voice in his government, and for this 
reason they kept the rights of government out of his 
hands as long as possible. Monarchical Europe has 
looked with a good deal of skepticism on the trial of 
democracy in the New World. It is only within the 



Freedom and Law i6§ 

past few years that Europe has been willing to confess 
that it has been even a partial success. Our brothers 
on that side of the ocean have put themselves in the 
attitude of the overanxious mother who was unwill- 
ing that her son should go near the water until he 
had first learned to swim. How can men use freedom 
until they have first learned to use it in the school 
of experience? It must be handed to them a little 
at a time until they are able to enjoy it completely. 
The common man who came to America could not have 
used aright the liberties which were granted him in this 
country had he not learned to use them in his own local 
self-government in the old country. When boys and 
girls become men and women, they cannot be expected 
to use aright the liberties which are then thrust upon 
them unless they first learn to use them in the process 
of their education. 

SOURCE OF LAW 

In order to develop in the pupil the proper attitude 
toward law and to create conditions conducive to his 
growth in self-control, we must get him to understand 
the nature and source of law. The pupil is not going 
to respect the law so long as he believes that it emanates 
from the teacher. He is not going to be interested in 
his school work so long as the inspiration comes from 
without, and he is not going to thrive in the school 
atmosphere where the teacher's will is law and no place 
is given for the exercise of his own individuality. 

The pupil must understand that the real law of the 
school is inherent in the organism, and that the law the 
teacher promulgates is real law because it corresponds 
with this inherent law. The very nature and purposes 
of the organism determine the law. This is true of a 



l66 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

lodge, a church, and of a state, just as it is of a school. 
The botanist does not make the laws of plant life, nor 
does the physician make the laws of the human body. 
The statesman does not make, but reveals, the laws of 
the state. He is the best botanist who has the clearest 
insight into the laws of plant life and can best reveal 
them. He is the best statesman who best understands 
the purposes and nature of the political organization 
called a state and gives the clearest enunciation of them. 
If the statesman were to promulgate a statute that would 
not help the state to perform its proper function, that 
statute would not be a law. The teacher's business is 
not to make the laws of the school, but to reveal them, 
and he is the best teacher who is most in sympathy with 
the nature and purposes of the school and can reveal its 
laws with accuracy. 

The first step in bringing about the proper conditions 
in the school and in securing the proper attitude of the 
pupil toward law is to get him to understand thoroughly 
that its laws are not teacher-made, but that they are 
what they are because the school is what it is. This is 
the best place in the world for the teacher to take the 
pupil into her confidence and to have a heart-to-heart 
talk with him about the nature of the school and its 
laws. She should make it clear to him that she is not 
a dictator, a master whose word is law, but that she is a 
friend whose business it is to reveal the law of the school 
and that she can do this better than the pupil because 
she knows better than he the nature of the school organ- 
ism. The next step is to get him to see that he is not the 
only one who must obey the law, but that the teacher, 
the superintendent, the school board, and the patron are 
as much subject to the law of the school as the htmiblest 
pupil. The real law of school life is violated by anv 



Freedom and Law 167 

one of these when he does anything that impairs or tends 
to impair, or when he fails to do anything that increases, 
the usefulness of the school. All these are bound as much 
as the pupil by the following obligation: I will be guilty 
of no line of conduct unless all may be guilty of the same 
without impairing or tending to impair the usefulness of 
the school. This includes the law of the school, and the 
governor of the state has no more right to violate it 
than has the smallest boy in the school. 

If we can get the pupil to understand this fundamental 
law, he will have a different attitude toward the school 
and its work. If we can get him to understand that the 
highest function of the school is to bring about his normal 
growth and development, the problem of school disci- 
pline will have been solved. Our trouble in the past 
has been due to our dealing with the child as though 
the origin or nature of the school regulation were no 
concern of his; his business was to obey and ask no 
questions, and it is our opinion that he has conducted 
himself admirably under the circumstances. The child 
in many instances rebels against the law of the school 
because he feels that it is imposed by the arbitrary will 
of another without regard to his welfare. 

TRUE LAW IN HARMONY WITH CHILD NATURE 

The true laws of the school are in harmony with child 
nature, and the ideal school organism is such as will 
bring about the harmonious development of all the child's 
faculties. If the school does not take into consideration 
the child's instincts and present needs, it is not what it 
ought to be, nor is it founded on the true laws of school 
life. If it does not offer a suitable atmosphere for the 
normal growth of the child in every phase of its life, it is 
not a proper school for him. There is no better evidence 

12 



i68 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

that there is something fundamentally wrong with the 
schools as they are organized at present than the fact 
that they do not bring about the harmonious develop- 
ment of all the child's faculties and do not secure his 
co-operation in their work. They do not lead the child, 
but drive him. The average boy would not attend school 
if his wishes were consulted. There are many things 
about the school that do not appeal to his nature. He 
feels that he is not in his normal element. He is cramped 
by the presence of the teacher, whom he regards, not as 
a friend and helper, but as a master whom he must serve 
and whose will he must obey. If the school were organ- 
ized properly, he would like to attend, for it would appeal 
to him as no other place in the world. There is something 
fundamentally wrong with the school which the pupil 
does not like to attend, and the first thing necessary is 
the arrangement of the work of the school in harmony 
with his present instincts and needs. The normal child 
is not predisposed to disobey the real laws of the school, 
as is commonly believed. He wants to obey and does 
obey implicitly for a year or two until he finds that this 
obedience is not in harmony with his best interests. 
When he begins to realize that he is not the chief factor, 
but that the teacher overshadows him, he rebels, because 
he likes to have his worthiness recognized. He likes to 
be the central figure wherever he is, if he is a normal 
child, and he can be handled most easily by being made 
such. 

The fact that pupils regard it as a breach of honor to 
"tell on" one another is evidence that they have an 
abnormal conception of the school and its relation to 
them. In an absolute monarchy, where the government 
is carried on for the benefit of the ruler, the citizen cannot 
be blamed for shielding his neighbor from the penalty of 



Freedom and Law i6g 

the law and thus protecting him from a common enemy. 
But in a democratic country, where the government 
derives its powers from the consent of the governed and 
where the ruler as well as the ruled must obey the law 
of the land, it is to the interest of all that the laws be 
enforced. If the teacher's strong arm is the source of 
authority in school, and if all laws emanate from her, the 
school is not a democracy, but a monarchy, and we should 
expect the pupils to conduct themselves as do the sub- 
jects of a monarchy, and band themselves together to 
oppose the ruler. He is on one side, they are on the other, 
and it would be treason to give any information that would 
give an enemy any advantage over a friend. Such con- 
ditions would suit very well in a school where the aim 
was to train subjects for an autocracy, but they are 
altogether out of place where the end is to train them for 
citizenship in a free republic. 

However, when the law emanates from the school 
organism founded on the best interests of the pupil, the 
violator will be regarded as a common enemy. He will 
no more be countenanced by the law-abiding students 
than a highwayman is countenanced by the law-abiding 
citizens of a republic, where all recognize that the laws 
of the land are in harmony with their highest good. If 
conditions were right and the pupils were taught to 
understand their true relation to the school law, they 
would feel in duty bound to report every infraction of 
that law, for such an infraction would be, not against 
the teacher, but against the school and their own best 
interests. 

OBEDIENCE TO LAW BASIS FOR FREEDOM 

This conception of the law offers the only basis for 
freedom. When the school is organized in harmony with 



l*jo Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the child's instincts and brings about his complete develop- 
ment, the pupil will be free, but he will be free, not in 
spite of, but through, the law. He will be free, not by- 
violating the law, but by obeying the "perfect law of 
liberty." Most people have a wrong conception of law 
and believe that its purpose is to restrain. But the 
real purpose of the law is to direct us to the attainment 
of the greatest good. If the draymen, cab drivers, and 
automobilists in Chicago did not obey the city's regula- 
tions, soon all traffic on the streets would be impossible. 
These regulations may seem in certain instances to inter- 
fere with the liberty of some certain cab driver, but in 
the end they bring about not only his good, but also the 
greatest good of all. The laws of the school offer such 
conditions as v/ill bring about the pupil's best develop- 
ment, and there can be no true development without 
obedience to these laws. When the sacred writer said, 
"We are no longer imder the law, but under grace," he 
meant that we are no longer under the old law; but 
that we had substituted the will of God for law, and 
that now that will is law to us. It is not law in the sense 
that it tells us that we shall or shall not do, but it works 
with our wills and leads us to all truth — the truth that 
makes us free. Thus freedom does not come apart from 
the law, but through the law — the perfect law that is 
not man-made, but that is inherent in the nature of the 
organism, whether that organism be a school, a state, or 
the kingdom of God. Knowing the truth about this 
organism is the only way to freedom, hence not without 
reason the Great Teacher could say, "Ye shall know 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Man 
is free only when he acts in harmony with truth, and he 
cannot act in harmony with truth without knowing the 
truth. The man or woman, or the boy or girl, who 



Freedom and Law 



171 



thinks he is free when following the dictates of his own 
whims is the most mistaken person in the world. We 
are all slaves to a thousand conditions we meet almost 
every day, because we do not know the truth about these 
conditions. We are slaves to physical conditions because 
we do not know the truth regarding these conditions 
that would enable us to master them. We reason like 
children because the truth is unknown to us. We do 
not know the facts. In the spiritual world there are a 
thousand unseen forces that have the complete mastery 
of us because we do not understand them. We are tossed 
about by a thousand false fears and superstitions because 
we do not understand. 

It is the teacher's business to reveal to the pupil the 
perfect law of the school and help him to see that because 
he obeys it the greatest good will come to him. Not 
only this; she must offer such conditions that it will 
be easy for him to obey the law, for it is by obeying that 
he will learn to obey. It should be the aim to bring 
about such conditions as will make it most natural for 
him to be obedient, hence the school must be organized 
in harmony with his child nature and present needs. 
The laws should be so much in harmony with his normal 
growth that he will naturally be impelled to obey, not 
only the letter, but the spirit, for it is only the willing 
obedience that develops the habit of obedience. The 
habit of obedience should be formed before the pupil 
leaves school so that when he comes into the conditions 
on the outside it will be easy for him to obey the laws 
that there obtain and his freedom may be assured. The 
pupil should be so well acquainted with the laws of his 
growth and school life that his obedience to them will 
become natural; all restrictions should be removed 
from him as the habit of obedience is formed. 



1/2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

SCHOOL SHOULD INCULCATE HABIT OF OBEDIENCE 

One of the greatest weaknesses of the present school 
system is that it fails to inculcate in the pupil this habit 
of obedience. Being founded, for the most part, on force, 
it seldom gets more than external obedience, and for 
this reason the habit of obedience is not formed. When 
the pupil leaves school, he does not know how to obey. 
He does not have the proper respect for law. The school 
may not be wholly to blame for this disrespect for the 
law, but its very nature encourages it. We have founded 
the school on force instead of on love and regard for the 
pupil's welfare as we should have done, and, as a result, 
we have not developed in our pupils the habit of obedi- 
ence. Divine law is perfect because it is based on love, 
and the school law will be perfect when it is based on 
love. The teacher should never substitute her will for 
the child's will. Whenever it becomes necessary for her 
to run counter to the child's will, she should make it 
clear to him that it is because his will is out of harmony 
with his own supreme good. To do this, she must not 
only understand the nature of the school and its laws, 
but she must have in her heart love for the child and 
manifest it in her attitude toward him. It is for this 
reason that coercion should be resorted to only after 
every other remedy has failed and when the teacher 
becomes thoroughly convinced that the normal nature 
of the child has become so perverted that he cannot be 
induced to act in harmony with his highest good. 
Coercion is really an acknowledgment of failure; when 
it is resorted to, it is more for the good of the school as 
a whole than for the individual pupil. It sometimes 
happens that the environment of the child has been so 
abnormal that it has crushed his child nature; but in 
the great majority of cases the teacher may lead him 



Freedom and Law i^j 

to see his relation to the school law if she approaches 
him in a spirit of love. 

The ideal school is that in which the organization is 
in such complete harmony with child life that the pupil 
will not be conscious of any restriction. The personality 
of the teacher and the atmosphere of the school should 
be such that the pupil will unconsciously obey the laws 
of the school and at the same time feel that he is being 
obliged to bow to no external authority. The ability to 
bring about such conditions is the supreme test of the 
teacher. 3he must know which of the child's impulses 
are normal and which are abnormal, and be able to 
transform the abnormal into normal impulses. She is 
to do this, not by coercion, but by inspiration. 

SCHOOL SHOULD BE ADAPTED TO THE NATURE OF 
THE CHILD 

As the teacher is not to substitute her will for the will 
of the child, so she is not to substitute her motives and 
impulses for those of the child. She must realize that 
the child's way of looking at things is different from 
that of the adult; that motives that appeal to the adult 
will not appeal to him. Conduct which seems to her to 
be wrong may not seem so to him at all; what seems to 
her a waste of time may be to him a great source of 
development. The child is not a little man or woman, 
as some people seem to think; he is not a man in any 
sense of the term ; he is a different kind of being. He has 
thoughts, emotions, and feelings all peculiar to himself. 
As he grows up, he gradually comes to see things as 
adults do, because he grows up in the adult's environ- 
ment. From the adult's standpoint, the child rises to 
higher and higher motives ; he becomes a better and more 
complete being. But we must remember that this is 



1/4 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

only the way the adult looks at it; the child does not 
see it in that way at all ; and if we had a perfect standard 
by which to judge life, we might find that the child is 
right. Indeed, it was the opinion of the Great Teacher 
that the little child is a fitter subject for the kingdom of 
heaven than the adult; and those who have understood 
child nature best have been the ones to pay the child the 
highest tribute. Wordsworth seemed to think that the 
golden age of man is in his infancy. We all remember 
this tribute which he paid to childhood: 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The soul that rises with us, our Hfe's star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And Cometh from afar. 

Not in entire forgetfulness. 

And not in utter nakedness. 
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 

From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy. 

We must learn to take the child as he is and make his 
environment conducive to growth. We must let him 
grow like the plant, in his own nattiral way. We can 
no more force his growth than we can force the growth 
of the oak. It matters not how rich we may make the 
soil or how bright the sunshine may be, we can force 
the oak to grow no faster than nature intended. Indeed, 
the soil may be so rich and the sunshine so bright that 
the growth of the plant will be dwarfed; and no matter 
how conducive we may make the child's environment to 
his growth, he will not grow faster than nature intended. 
We may force the accumulation of knowledge; but 
knowledge is not growth, and too much knowledge 
accumulated without being organized and applied is 
hostile to growth. In spite of the time-honored adage, 
knowledge is not power any more than food in the stomach 



Freedom and Law 175 

is power; it may become power or it may not. It is not 
power until it has been assimilated into bone and muscle, 
and in the stomach of the dyspeptic this may never 
take place. 

The child's knowledge of right and wrong depends, at 
first, on the conditions about him, and for this reason 
these conditions should be conducive to his highest good. 
His environment should be such that he will base his 
conduct on proper motives and never on such as appeal 
to his lower instincts. The school organization should 
be such as to develop in him a proper conception of right 
and wrong. The school organization is, indeed, the chief 
moral force the teacher has at her command. It is supe- 
rior to preaching, for preaching will do no good unless 
the school organization is such as to put the preaching 
into practice. It will do no good to tell the pupil not 
to lie, if the school is organized in such a way as to bring 
the greatest immediate good to him by lying. We can 
never bring the pupil to a proper conception of right 
and wrong except through self -activity. Hence, when 
we crush the child's self -activity and resort to coercion, 
we destroy the greatest means at our command for the 
development of moral force. 

The school where the child has been trained to be 
obedient to the real law, and where he moves freely 
about without external pressure because the habit of 
obedience has been formed, is the only kind of school 
in which adequate results can be obtained. It is the 
only school where the highest development of the child, 
physically, mentally, and morally, can be brought about. 
In any other kind of a situation his growth will be forced, 
hence unnatural and without the harmonious develop- 
ment of all his powers. In an atmosphere of freedom 
we not only bring about, in a natural way, the child's 



iy6 Present Bay Tendencies in Education 

complete and normal growth, but we are no longer 
troubled with the question of discipline. The child is 
hard to control only when he is forced to act contrary 
to his nature. If the schools were organized in harmony 
with his native tendencies, he would be easy to control, 
for it would be more natural for him to obey than not 
to obey. When we understand child nature completely 
and adapt the work of the school to the child's present 
needs, the question of discipline will largely have been 
solved. 

WHEN THE LAW IS VIOLATED 

Of course there will always be abnormal children who 
will require special treatment. The home conditions 
and training of many children prior to their coming to 
school, and even after they start to school, are not whole- 
some, and special tact is required in dealing with such 
children. However, in the great majority of cases home 
conditions have not been so bad but that love and patience 
can bring things right in a very short time. Such chil- 
dren may not understand everything in the school, and 
its organization may not suit their fancy; they may not 
have the same insight that the normal child has, who 
has been taught the spirit of true obedience from the 
cradle; but they will be willing to walk by faith for 
awhile, if they are sure of the love and sympathy of the 
teacher. It is only in the isolated case that the child 
will not respond to proper conditions in the school. 
Nature is such a great educator that it takes very abnor- 
mal conditions in the home to put the child beyond the 
power of its influence, and what has done much to save 
the child from bad conditions in the school will also do 
much to save the child from unwholesome conditions in 
the home. Only those tendencies that are inherent and 



Freedom and Law ^ 177 

deep in the child's nature will render him insusceptible 
to the proper conditions in the school. The child who 
will not respond to such conditions is defective, physi- 
cally, mentally, or morally, and, if such defects cannot 
be removed, the school can do but little for him and 
he would better be removed to an institution provided 
for his type. Physical defects render a child abnormal. 
If the child shows an inclination not to respond to the 
conditions in the school, his physical condition should be 
looked after. Perhaps the worst enemies to good work 
in the school are defective vision or hearing, malnutrition, 
adenoids, enlarged tonsils, and nervousness. 

Sometimes the child is abnormal because he is below 
or above the average in mentality. Either condition will 
put him out of harmony with conditions that are suited 
to the normal child. When moral perversion is a result 
of heredity, it will be hard to overcome; but when it is 
a result of improper home conditions, it can be over- 
come by the right kind of treatment. It requires an 
abundance of patience, love, sympathy, and tact on the 
part of the teacher. 

But sometimes even the normal child will lapse into 
lower tendencies and fail to respond to the laws of the 
school. Fits of stubbornness will get possession of him 
and he will tax the teacher's patience to the limit. In 
such cases all depends on the teacher's patience holding 
out; for, if she will keep her head and keep in view the 
ultimate end she is trying to attain, the pupil will, in 
the great majority of cases, see the error of his way in a 
very short time. If he does not, he should be made to 
realize that, by his attitude, he has severed his relations 
temporarily with the school and that he must get right 
before these relations can be restored. He must be made 
to feel that by his failure to harmonize with the school 



iy8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

he has severed those relations and that the only way he 
can restore them is by changing his attitude toward the 
school and by obeying its regulations. He must realize 
that his offense is not against the teacher, but against 
the school, and that he alone can make conditions right. 
The teacher should never take an offense of a pupil as 
personal. She should always be in the attitude of a 
third party, ready to do all in her power to bring the two 
parties, the offender and the school, together. When 
she assumes this attitude, she can sit calmly by, while 
the offender solves his own problems, sees his own mis- 
takes, and manifests a disposition to make things right. 
This attitude on the part of the teacher is in perfect 
harmony with the origin and nature of the school law. 
If the teacher begins to fret and worry, and to regard 
the pupil's offense as a personal thrust at her, she acts as 
if she were personally responsible for the laws of the 
school being what they are. 

The teacher must remember that the attitude of the 
pupil is the all-important thing. If his attitude is right, 
she may overlook with safety the external act; but if 
his attitude is wrong, he is wrong, it makes no difference 
how obedient he may be externally to the laws of the 
school. If the pupil who has violated the laws of the 
school shows that he is sorry for his conduct, so far as 
that pupil is concerned nothing more should be required 
of him. He may have to bear the natural consequences 
of his offenses, just as we all have to suffer for our mis- 
takes; but his attitude toward the school is as right as 
it can be. However, if a pupil asserts that his attitude 
is right when it is not, there is nothing to do but to 
remove him from the school until we are thoroughly 
convinced that he is really sorry for his deed. He should 
be required to study his offense until he sees clearly that 



Freedom and Law i7Q 

it violates the real laws of school life. Many of our 
mistakes in school discipline have been due to our requir- 
ing blind obedience of children. Children do not like to 
obey without knowing the reason any more than grown 
people do, and we cannot get the right kind of obedience 
from them until we show clearly to them why they should 
obey. The best exercise for the child when he has com- 
mitted an offense against the school is for him to study 
the nature of the offense until he sees clearly that it 
tends to destroy the usefulness of the school. He should 
never be sent home during this time; but he should be 
isolated from the other pupils and allowed to take no 
part in the exercises of the school until he clearly sees 
the error of his way and manifests a right attitude. 

Thus we see that the real law of the school cannot 
be written out. Indeed, the law of no organism, whether 
that organism be a school, church, or state, can be written 
out. The written law is a very poor expression at best 
of the real law of the organism, and the question of school 
discipline will not be solved until we get the child to 
understand the real law of the school. The pupil must 
be induced to obey the spirit rather than the letter of the 
law; in fact, obedience to the letter of the law is not 
obedience at all; it does not lead to obedience, but to 
blind submission, which is disastrous to the complete 
and harmonious development of the child. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Democracy in school government and its relation to the 
development of self-control. 

2. The relation of physical defects to the conduct of pupils. 

3. The management of the subnormal and backward child. 

4. Health supervision in the schools of America. 

5. The management of the precocious child. 



i8o Present Day Tendencies in Education 

Further Readings 

Bagley, W. C. Classroom Management, Macmillan. 

. School Discipline. Macmillan. 

Dresslar, F. B. School Hygiene. Macmillan. 

Hughes, James L. Froebel's Educational Laws, pp. 222-247. 

D. Appleton & Co. 
Morgan, B. S. The Backward Child. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
Tompkins, Arnold. School Management. Ginn & Co. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE HEART OF THE TEACHER 

TO THE teacher has been given the most delicate 
work that God ever intrusted to mortal hands — 
shaping the eternal destiny of little children. In the 
teacher's hands God has placed the raw materials of 
his most wonderful creation, and it is her task to shape 
that material to a destiny worthy of its creator. The 
teacher has the child at the most plastic period of his 
life, and what he becomes in life will depend very largely 
on how she performs her task. Thus her work carries 
with it the greatest responsibilities, and no one should 
aspire to the office of teacher unless she is willing to 
assimie these responsibilities seriously. No one is in a 
position to do more good than the teacher, and likewise 
no one is in a position to do more harm. Whether good 
or harm results from her work will depend upon whether 
her heart is in it. 

Thus the heart of the teacher is the important thing. 
Her knowledge is important, her manners are important, 
her ability to impart what she knows is important; but 
most important of all is the heart she puts into her work. 
She may put into her work all other things, but if she 
does not put her heart into it, it is largely valueless. The 
teacher, above all others, should have just one aim in 
life and she should be willing to sacrifice all else to that 
aim. The growing life of the child should be everything 
to her, and she should be willing to sacrifice all, that the 
child may live. 

This is a great age for reforms. The program of the 
schools never had such a shaking up as it is now receiving, 

i8i 



i82 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

and it is more than likely that the next ten years will 
make the school almost an entirely different institution 
from what it is to-day. In the mechanics of school 
work we are fast "leaving our outgrown shell" and the 
**low vaulted past" and are building for ourselves "more 
stately mansions." We are making most rapid progress 
in school architecture, school organization, school sani- 
tation, and in almost every phase of school work; but 
we have not progressed as much as we should in that most 
needed of all reforms — the reform of the teacher's heart.. 
It is true that the school business has more heart in it 
than ever before; teachers are guided more by love and 
sympathy than ever before, and the day of the heartless 
teacher who ruled the children by fear is almost a thing 
of the past. But, while much has been done to make the 
work of the schools a rhatter of the heart and not of the 
head only, too many teachers even yet look upon their 
work as a cold business proposition and deal with their 
pupils about as the business man deals with stocks and 
bonds. However, the school is one place where business 
is not business, and the teacher who does not set the 
child's life, his feelings and sensibilities, above the geog- 
raphy or the arithmetic lesson will make a serious blunder 
in the education of that child. 

Teachers frequently complain that their task is a hard 
one, and no one will question that they have some ground 
for such complaint. However, did they not know before 
they took up the work that it is no easy task? Did 
they not know that the life of a teacher is full of annoy- 
ances, vexations, and a thousand things that try her 
patience to the limit? Knowing this, they took up 
their work, and they have no right to remain in the 
schoolroom and hold in their hands, as they do, the 
destiny of their children unless they are willing to 



The Heart of ihe}Teacker 183 

bear bravely the responsibilities that go with that work. 
Then the hardships of the teacher's work are largely 
due to a divided devotion. Too frequently she has 
other ambitions than the growing life of the child. She 
too frequently thinks more of her own ambitions and 
desires than she does of the lives of her children. The 
teacher cannot serve God and Mammon at the same 
time, and her hardships are a result of her serving her- 
self when she is claiming to serve the child. The only 
way to happiness for the teacher is for her to make up 
her mind that she is willing to lose her life that she may 
have the life that is more abundant. No one can be 
supremely happy in the schoolroom unless that one is 
willing to make herself "a living sacrifice" that better 
things may come to the child. The teacher's work is a 
joy when there is singleness of devotion; it is drudgery 
when devotion is divided. 

THE SUCCESSFUL TEACHER 

There are many elements in the life of a successful 
teacher which cannot be mentioned here. It is our ptir- 
pose at this time to call your attention to the more 
fundamental of these elements and to discuss the impor- 
tance of heart in the teacher's work. 

I. Optimism. One of the most vital elements in the 
life of the successful teacher is the spirit of optimism. 
The person who is a victim of despondency and unable 
to shake off the disease commits a crime every day she 
remains in the schoolroom. She casts gloom over the 
lives of the children under her care and does them a 
permanent injury. They unconsciously assume her dis- 
position and, if they are with her long enough, will absorb 
the germ of melancholia into their own lives. The uncon- 
scious tuition that goes out from the teacher is far more 

13 



184 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

important than the work she consciously does. The 
spirit that emanates from her will do more to shape the 
lives of her children than do the grammar, arithmetic, 
or geography lessons; hence one of the saddest things 
in the world is for a gloomy, despondent, sour-faced 
teacher to have in her charge a room full of little children 
and to be permitted to poison their lives. The growing 
child is like the growing flower in the garden in that it 
loves the sunshine, and it will pine away if it does not 
get it. You may put into your garden every other 
element necessary to the growth of the flower, but if 
the simshine does not come down upon it, it will never 
attain its possibilities. 

A room full of children where there is no sunshine is 
impervious to every educational effort of the teacher. 
The recitation without cheer is a dead recitation, and it 
is soon forgotten. The recitation without warmth can 
result only in harm to the children, and there cannot be 
warmth in the recitation unless the teacher has a sun- 
shiny heart and lets enthusiasm for her work flow out 
from her life. All of us have seen children sit in the 
class lifeless while the teacher goes through the motion 
of hearing the recitation. We have also seen recitations 
where the fire flies, where there was enthusiasm in the 
heart of the teacher which caused her face to glow and 
beams to go out to the children and set their souls afire. 
When you put a grain of com into the cold ground of 
winter, it rots, in most cases, and does not sprout; but 
if you put the same grain into the warm ground of the 
spring or summer, it will come up in a few days. It 
was the same grain and the same ground ; the only differ- 
ence was in the warmth. Two schoolrooms may be alike 
in every other respect, but the difference in warmth will 
make all the difference in the world. The difference 



The Heart of the Teacher 185 

between the child and the grain of com is that we can 
tell when the grain of com has decayed, but we cannot 
tell so well when the work of the school ends as disas- 
trously for the child. 

Of course, we cannot understand the mysteries of 
growth. We cannot tell how all these things have come 
to be. We do not know what it is in the com that makes 
it responsive to the warm ground and unresponsive to 
the cold; but we know that it is so. We do not know 
why the child will not respond to a cold atmosphere in 
the schoolroom, but we know that he will not, and one 
of the greatest crimes of the age is our attempt to 
make him do so. The cold heart of the teacher which 
causes the cold atmosphere to pervade the schoolroom 
has ruined more lives than all other imperfections of the 
schools combined. In our attempt to reform the work 
of the schools, it is strange that we have not struck 
a blow at this the greatest of all their weaknesses. 

The importance of cheer, sunshine, and happiness in 
the schoolroom should be indelibly impressed on the mind 
of every teacher. She should do all in her power to keep 
unhappy thoughts from entering her room, and, for this 
reason, she should refrain from all kinds of criticism of 
her pupils that will lower their spirits even for a season. 
If they do wrong, let her remind them of it in love and 
sympathy, and never in such a manner as to cast gloom 
over their lives. She should remember that when she 
lowers the spirits of her children, she renders herself 
powerless to help them. At the beginning of each recita- 
tion she should bring about such a feeling among her 
pupils that they will be enthusiastic in their work and 
responsive to the lessons that she would teach them. 

This does not mean that the teacher is to turn the 
pupils loose to follow their own whims. She is to hold 



i86 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

them rigidly to the program that she has marked out 
for them and that she knows is best for them. However, 
in doing this, she need not lose her temper and deal with 
them in a manner certain to drive them away from her. 
The way of kindness, even though it be the way of 
severity, is the way by which the teacher must lead hef 
pupils if she would keep their hearts open to her and 
their lives responsive to her efforts. 

2. Self-confidence is another element the teacher must 
possess if she would put heart into her work and reach 
the heart of the pupil. Too many teachers fail because 
they do not take hold of their work. They stand off 
at arm's length and do not get into the work in such a 
manner as to gain the confidence and arouse the enthusi- 
asm of their pupils. This lack of confidence is due, in 
most cases, to a feeling on the part of the teacher that she 
does not know the subject or how to use the subject in 
reaching the child. Hence one of the first requisites to 
success in teaching is a thorough knowledge of the subject 
and a feeling of ability to use that subject in bringing 
about the child's development. The teacher must also 
know child life, especially the lives and characteristics 
of her own children. The work of the teacher who does 
not have enough interest in her children to do all in her 
power to study their lives and individual peculiarities 
is sure to end in miserable failure. 

The teacher's knowledge, too, should be something 
more than mere book knowledge. Teachers have been 
accused long enough of being theoretical, bookish, and 
it is time they were coming down to real things. They 
are certainly dealing with a very real thing in the life 
of the child, and they should, above all people, be practi- 
cal and have common sense. A knowledge of common 
things will constitute the teacher's most effective means 



The Heart of the Teacher i8y 

of education, and it will be a great day for the schools 
when those things that are right around us mean as much, 
at least, as the things that happened three thousand 
years ago and on the other side of the world. 

When the teacher knows her business thoroughly, and 
knows that she knows it, she will be able to do her work 
with that confidence which will draw her pupils to her 
and make it possible for her to touch their inner lives. 
It will enable her to get away from self, free herself from 
self -consciousness, and enter the life of the pupil. She 
can then study his powers, resources, and possibilities, 
and know how to deal with him so as to get best results. 

Then the teacher must have confidence, not only in 
herself, but also in her pupils. She must let them know 
that she has confidence in them, and for this reason she 
should never say or do a thing that would cause them to 
feel that she doubts them. She should point out to them 
their faults and do all she can to help them to correct 
them, but she should do this in kindness and never in 
such a manner as to lower their self-esteem. 

3. Love. The cardinal element in the teacher's life 
is love for her children. Without love for her children 
she can never reach their hearts. It is love that brings 
the teacher and the pupil together and gives their inter- 
course that genuineness and spontaneity essential to 
good results. It is love that enables the teacher to look 
beyond the crude exterior of the pupil, the dirty face, 
the tousled hair, the ragged clothes, to the hidden possi- 
bilities that lie in his inner life. It is the magic word 
that opens the door of his heart and lets her into his 
life. There is no way in the world by which the teacher 
can reach the pupil's heart except that of genuine love. 

But if a teacher does not naturally possess this love, 
how is she to cultivate it? In answer to this, I will say 



l88 Present Day Tendencies in Edtccation 

that love is based on sympathy, and the teacher cannot 
learn to love her pupils unless she is able to sympathize 
with them. A safe test of genuine teaching ability is 
not to be found in a knowledge of the subjects to be 
taught, but in the ability to sympathize with the lives 
of children. That person who cannot recall her own 
childhood days and the experiences of her life as a child 
has no place in the schoolroom. This is the supreme test 
of teaching ability, and it is not enough for the teacher 
to feign sympathy. There is in our ranks far too much 
of this. There is too much would-be childishness on the 
part of teachers which the child easily detects and for 
which he has nothing but the profoundest contempt. 
It is only genuine, unfeigned S3mipathy that will draw 
the teacher and the pupil together and bring about that 
spirit of freedom so essential to good results. 

The teacher who wishes to cultivate in her heart this 
love and sympathy for [the pupil should read again of 
the life of Pestalozzi and his work for the children. He 
possessed love in a high degree and was the very incar- 
nation of unselfish devotion, patience, and sympathy. 
He was willing to bury himself there with his children 
and be forgotten if only he could know that he was help- 
ing them to better things. Although they were ragged, 
repulsive, covered with vermin and sores, he stayed with 
them night and day, through sickness and in health. 
He wept with them in their little sorrows and rejoiced 
with them in their childish joys. He was with them 
constantly, and it almost broke his heart when the 
government closed his school and he was forced to leave 
them. Such unselfish devotion is enough to make most 
of us hang our heads in shame and resolve that we shall 
never again complain of bad conditions and of the diffi- 
culties in our way. If he endured so much in such love, 



B 



The Heart of the Teacher i8g 

sympathy, and patience, we certainly have no right to 
complain that our yokes are heavy or that our burdens 
are hard to bear. 

Love for the pupil means that the teacher is to get 
away from self and seek, not her own good, but the good 
of her pupils. It means that she is not to think of self 
or to work for her own good, except as greater good to 
herself will mean better things for her pupils. All mere 
show and pretense not for the best interests of the children 
under her care will be carefully avoided, although it 
might add to her own reputation and standing as a 
teacher. No doubt one of the greatest hindrances to 
good work among teachers is the desire to make a show. 
Thefe is much insincerity in reports that go out to parents, 
and frequently the sincere, honest teacher must suffer 
because of the high grade given by the dishonest teacher. 
While it is, perhaps, true that teachers are above the 
average in honesty, the temptation here is so great that 
many teachers fall. The teacher who places the growing 
life of the child above her own welfare will send to parents 
an honest statement of just what the child is doing, and 
will make no effort to deceive in order to bring some good 
to herself. 

Love sees no fault in the child it may not have felt 
itself, and for this reason it is slow to criticize the child. 
It looks for the good rather than for the bad, and when 
the child does not learn, it imputes that fact to its own 
faults rather than to those of the child. However, this is 
quite contrary to the attitude assumed by those teachers 
who never think of their own weaknesses, their own fail- 
ures, but charge every failure in their work to the weak- 
nesses of the child. "He hasn't been trained properly 
before," "he is dull," "he is indolent," or "he is mischiev- 
ous," when, as a matter of fact, in the great majority 



igo Present Day Tendencies in Education 

of cases, the trouble would vanish if the teacher would 
correct her own faults. Love makes the teacher sincere 
with herself and causes her to search for her own faults 
and to overlook the faults of her children. 

Dnunmond said, "Love is the greatest thing in the 
world," and none of us is disposed to doubt it. It will 
make the darkest schoolroom the lightest; the coldest, the 
warmest. It will cause enthusiasm to glow in the teacher's 
heart and send out sparks that will kindle the fires in the 
hearts of all her children. It will make the teacher happy 
in her work; it will make the children happy; it removes 
all the difficulties and makes the hardest problem seem 
the easiest. It puts a smile on the teacher's face and sends 
out from her a beam of sunshine that will brighten the 
faces of all her children. It will open their hearts and 
make them responsive to every effort of the teacher. 
When the teacher is guided by love, she cannot make a 
mistake; when she is not guided by love, every move 
she makes is a mistake. Surely love is the greatest 
thing in the world, and it is also the greatest thing in 
the life of the teacher. 

4. Patience. A fault of teachers that does much to 
impair the efficiency of their work is the lack of patience. 
The average teacher has learned to labor, but she has 
not learned "to labor and to wait." She expects results 
too soon. She plants the seed to-day and expects to see 
the ripened harvest to-morrow. She is like the child 
who plants the grain of com in the garden and, before it 
has had time to germinate, goes and digs it up to see 
how it is doing. She sees the weakness in the child and 
cannot understand that such weaknesses cannot be 
corrected in a day. She fails to realize that it takes 
time for the lessons in grammar, geography, or arithmetic 
to become a part of the child and she finds fault with 



The Heart of the Teacher igi 

him because such a small part of what he learns is really 
transmitted into mental and moral fiber. Time is one 
of the greatest factors in education, and the teacher should 
not expect results in a day. She should do her part, 
plant the seed, cultivate the ground, and be willing to 
wait for the harvest. Patience that makes one willing 
to wait is one of the sublimest characteristics in the 
world, and especially is it of inestimable value in the life 
of the teacher. 

5. Faith. But how is the teacher to attain the ideals 
here set forth? It would take perfection to attain such 
ideals, and, surely, teachers do not lay claim to perfection. 
It is true that the ideals here set forth are far beyond 
those ever attained by the average teacher; but the 
very nature of an ideal demands that it be beyond any- 
thing yet attained. The Great Teacher commanded us 
to love our neighbors as ourselves, and most of us feel 
that it is impossible; but just because we feel that such 
an ideal is impossible is no reason why we should fail 
to make an effort to attain it. The difficulty of attain- 
ing the ideal should make us more determined to attain 
it. It should help us to feel our own weaknesses and to 
remember that, although we cannot of ourselves rise to 
such heights, there is a Power that is ours if we will but 
reach forth our hands for it. The teacher, above every- 
one else, should strive to keep in touch with the source 
of power that will never fail her. She should realize 
that without Divine guidance she is but the blind leading 
the blind. Some one has said that the greatest miracle 
the world ever saw is the education of a child. It is far 
greater than bringing sight to the blind, hearing to the 
deaf, or causing the lame to walk. Does the teacher 
believe she can perform such a miracle without being 
in close touch with the source of power? Before the 



IQ2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

prophet brought life to the widow's son, he wrestled long 
in prayer, and before the teacher can bring life to the 
boys and girls under her care, she must also wrestle in 
prayer. If the Great Teacher needed to go apart to the 
mountain top to be alone to commune with the Father, 
how much more do we? If He felt the need of power 
from above, how much more should we? He felt the 
need because He saw all the difficulties and pitfalls in 
his way. We do not see the need because we are blind, 
and ignorant of the real dangers about us. He trusted 
his Father's guiding hand from the day He talked with the 
doctors in the temple until the day when He said, "Father, 
into thy hands I commend my spirit " ; but we go in bliss- 
ful ignorance because we do not see the pitfalls about us. 

The teacher should realize that she is shaping the eternal 
destinies of the children under her care. Every lesson 
she hears, every word she speaks, every decision she makes, 
changes their lives, not only for time, but for eternity. 
She says this little fellow shall be retained in the third 
grade, that one shall be promoted to the fourth, without 
thinking very much about it; but such a decision makes 
all the difference in the world to the child. He will be 
one kind of a being if he remains in the third grade, 
another if he goes to the fourth ; he will be one kind of a 
being if she punishes him for his conduct to-day, another 
if she does not. 

It is for this reason that all great teachers have trusted 
in the Divine Hand to guide them. They have realized 
that all mere intelligence, shrewdness, worldly wisdom, 
are nothing unless they are tempered by that wisdom 
that comes from above. The greatest teachers have been 
the most hvimble men and women, the most helpless in 
themselves, and have always kept in close touch with 
God's guiding hand. 



The Heart of the Teacher igj 

6. Self-forgetfulness. Thus one of the essential ele- 
ments in the life of the true teacher is the willingness to 
be forgotten. The true teacher is not in the business 
for her own personal gain; but she is willing to lose her 
life that she may have the life that is more abundant. 
She has counted the cost and has clearly made up her 
mind that the eternal riches of her reward as a teacher 
are to be desired above those other rewards that satisfy 
only for a season. She understands that the law of self- 
realization is the law of self-forgetfulness; that the grain 
of wheat must be buried and lost sight of, if it would 
produce the harvest. Most of us remember the story 
of Palissy in one of Longfellow's poems. We remember 
how he worked year after year for a new enamel. Hunger 
and even starvation threatened him, but still he worked 
on. He used the furniture of his room to kindle his fires, 
and let his family go in want that he might succeed in 
producing the enamel upon which his heart was set. 

O, Palissy! within thy breast 
Burned the hot fever of unrest; 
Thine was the prophet's vision, thine 
The exultation, the divine 
Insanity of noble minds. 
That never falters nor abates, 
But labors and endures and waits. 
Till all that it foresees it finds, 
Or what it does not find creates! 

Yes, the teacher must have that "divine insanity of 
noble minds," that "hot fever of unrest," which will 
cause her to lose her life in the life of the child and to 
forget self in order that better things may come to him. 
She must be as eager to find the best in the lives of her 
pupils as Palissy was to find the choice enamel upon which 
his heart was set, and to do that she must be willing to 



IQ4 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

lose sight of self, her own ambitions and desires, and live 

only for the welfare of her pupils. In the words of Arnold 
Tompkins, **the theorist or the philosopher may make 
his mark as such, but the man or woman known, honored, 
esteemed, and loved as a teacher must become such 
through an intense sympathy with the unfolding life of 
others — a sympathy that knows no peace except in 
self -forgetful labor nurturing the lives of those struggling 
for better things." 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. The teacher's preparation. 

2. The teacher's health. 

3. The teacher's ideals. 

4. The teacher's development while in service. 

5. The personality of the teacher. 

Further Readings 

James, William. Talks to Teachers, pp. 3-14. Henry Holt & Co. 
McKenny, Charles. The Personality of the Teacher. Row, 

Peterson & Co. 
Palmer, G. H. The Ideal Teacher. Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Tanner, Amy Eliza. The Child. Rand McNally & Co. 
Tompkins, Arnold. School Management, pp. 38-84. Ginn & Co. 
Terman, Lewis M. The Teacher's Health. Houghton Mifflin Co. 
Weimer, Hermann. The Way to the Heart of the Pupil. Macmillan. 



CHAPTER XIII 
MAKING THE PUPIL AN ACTIVE INQUIRER 

THE teacher must ever remember that it is the 
child's development she is trying to bring about. 
Everything she does should have as its motive this one 
aim. If there is any part of the school organization that 
does not help the child in this struggle for self-improve- 
ment, it is an unessential part of the system, and should 
be eliminated. The buildings, the equipment, the teacher, 
the lessons, the rules and regulations, are important only 
as they help the child to become better physically, men- 
tally, morally, or industrially. The efficiency of a school 
system can be measured, not by its buildings, its equip- 
ment, its teaching force, or its course of study, but by 
its ability to transform the boys and girls who come to 
it into strong manhood and womanhood. How does 
what I am doing help the child ? is a question the teacher 
should be constantly asking herself. How can I trans- 
form this geography lesson into mental and moral fiber? 
How can I arrange the child's play so as to make it count 
for most in his development? She should never be con- 
tent to go through with the daily routine of her work, 
however perfect the mechanism of the school may be 
or however excellent her methods of instruction, without 
knowing that her efforts are having a wholesome effect 
on the child and bringing him nearer to what she would 
have him be. She should never become so absorbed in 
the lessons, the textbooks, the rules and regulations, as 
to let them stand between her and the child. These 
things are all good in their places, but they should stand 
no chance when they impede the child's progress. 

195 



ig6 Present Day Tendencies in Edtccation 

The machinery of school work has become so complex, 
there is so much red tape, so many reports and examina- 
tions, and so much talk about lessons, textbooks, grades, 
etc., that the child has almost passed out of sight in the 
average school. His individuality is lost sight of, and he 
becomes a victim upon whom we make our displays and 
administer our tortures. We use him for the good of the 
system, instead of the opposite, as it should be. The 
teachers go to the normal schools and colleges, fill their 
heads with the lore of past ages and latest fads in methods 
of instruction and supervision, and then go out to find the 
victims through whom they can show what they know 
and what they can do. These victims are often unaware 
of their fate, and, like a lamb dirnib before his shearers, 
they open not their mouths. 

THE LECTURE METHOD 

One of the greatest evils in teaching and one that is 
doing most to crush the child is the so-called lecture 
method. This method is resorted to frequently because 
of an erroneous conception of the learning process. 
Teachers seem to feel that there is a certain amount of 
information they must force upon the child and that 
they can best accomplish this result by lecturing to him, 
when, as a matter of fact, they are, by such a method, 
taking the most direct course to quench his enthusiasm 
and to render him impervious to their every effort. If 
the child is to learn, he must be made the center of gravity 
in the school, and the teacher must have as her aim, not 
the filling of his head with the customary quantum of 
information, but the arousing of his dormant powers. 
The lecture method may do very well when the teacher 
wants to arouse the child's emotions and put inspiration 
into a certain lesson, but it is the most wasteful method 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer igy 

imaginable when extended effort is required. Such a 
method will have but a small part in the work of that 
teacher who is closely in touch with the child and with 
the needs of his growing nature, and who has the patience 
to labor and wait for his development. 
/^The teacher should always remain in the background 
in the school and put the child in the lead. She should 
conduct her work with a view to arousing him and induc- 
ing him to use his faculties. She should let the child 
do most of the talking; when she talks, she should do 
so only to arouse him to effort and never merely to cram 
into his head some information. Sometimes by the 
lecture method the teacher will appear to be obtaining 
results and by it she can make a greater show for a time, 
but such seeming results are most disastrous to the 
child's future progress. The lecture method will have 
but small part in the work of that teacher who is inspired 
with a genuine love for her work and for the child and is 
willing to sacrifice her own good for his development. 

In training the little child the teacher must never grow 
impatient and try to force results. Such a course would 
prove as disastrous to the growing life of the child as it 
would to the tender plant. The teacher must be sure 
that she has done her part and then wait for results. 
She must lose sight of her own ambitions and be willing 
to sacrifice herself that the best things may come to the 
child. 

THE PUPIL AN ACTIVE INQUIRER 

Closely allied to what we have been saying is the next 
point, namely, that the child should be made "an active 
inquirer instead of a passive recipient." He should be 
made to feel that he is the center of gravity in the school 
and that he grows only by what he does for himself. 



ig8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

The teacher very well knows that she can no more do the 
child's school work for him than she can do his eating, 
but, in spite of this, in the great majority of cases, she 
takes the role of chief importance in the school and makes 
the child become a mere passive recipient. Right at this 
point the teacher can learn an important lesson from the 
physician. The good physician is interested primarily, 
not in the medicine nor in his methods of administering 
it, but in the effect it will have on his patient, and we 
should regard him as a very poor physician who thinks 
more of the medicine and the way he gives it than he does 
of the patient's progress toward recovery. We do not 
think much of the physician who gives his dose and goes 
about his business, feeling that he has done his duty, 
regardless of the effect it has on the patient. Yet it is 
the common practice among teachers to do this very 
thing. They give their medicine hour after hour, day 
after day — and sometimes pretty bad medicine it is, 
too — without ever stopping to see what effect it is having 
on the child. They forget that the real purpose of their 
work is to arouse the pupil to effort, and seem to think 
that their chief aim is to cram into his head the facts of 
grammar, geography, and arithmetic. 

The teacher should feel that the information she gives 
the pupil is but a sample, a taste, as it were, of the good 
things that are in store for him if he will but become an 
active inquirer. As the purpose of the physician's 
medicine is to arouse his patient's bodily organs to per- 
form their natural functions, so the purpose of the infor- 
mation the teacher gives the child is to arouse him to 
perform his natural functions, physically, mentally, and 
morally. 

How blind we are not to recognize and act upon this 
important truth; yet we go on day after day trjdng to 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer iqq 

force upon the child the information, contained in text- 
books, and the only activity he displays, in many cases, 
is his determination not to receive it. Often he absolutely 
refuses to respond to the efforts of the teacher, but she 
goes on just the same, content with the meager results, 
and never dreaming of the great possibilities in her work 
if she would only make the pupil an active inquirer. If 
the teacher accomplishes adequate results in the school- 
room, she must study the child's nature more than she 
has done in the past and adapt his work more to his 
individual needs. She must possess a broader vision of 
his work and resort to no stereotyped method of pro- 
cedure. If one method will not arouse her pupil, she 
must try another, and another, her aim being to arouse 
him at any cost. When the teacher has found the bent 
of the child's mind, what his natural interests are, and 
adapts her work to his needs and capacities, he will no 
longer be the inactive creature that he is, but he will be 
as alert in his school work as he is in his play. Before 
the child comes to school his natural interests are active 
and lead him to learn many lessons of the things about 
him. In fact, during no similar period of his life is there 
such growth, such acquisition of knowledge, as during 
these years before the child enters school. It is only 
after he enters school and is tied down to the cold 
formalities of textbooks that he appears indifferent to 
his work, and the trouble begins. Even at school on 
the playground he is not the same fellow he is in the 
schoolroom. On the playground he is active, alert, full 
of enthusiasm, and courageous; but in the schoolroom 
he closes himself up like a clam and seems to have little 
desire to take part in the work. 

There is no reason why there should not prevail the 
same healthful condition in the schoolroom as prevails 

14 



200 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

on the playground, and such conditions will prevail when 
the teacher takes cognizance of the child's natural inter- 
ests and instincts and transfers playground methods to 
her work in the schoolroom. For the accomplishment 
of such results, there must be brought about a closer rela- 
tionship between the teacher and the child, and freedom 
must take the place of the cold formalism that we find 
in so many schoolrooms. The teacher must throw off 
the mask, be her real self, and let her pupils feel that 
she is not a master whose word is law, but that she is 
their friend, ready to help them wherever she can. When 
teacher and pupil stand in the relation of friend to friend, 
and the pupil feels that the work of the schools is really 
conducted for him, that he is the center of gravity, he 
will become an active inquirer, new zeal will characterize 
him, and he will go about his work with a joy and accom- 
plish results that will amaze us. 

FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS 

There are certain elements in the lives of successful 
men and women that will not grow in the cold formalism 
of the average schoolroom. Initiative and adaptability 
will grow only in the soil of freedom, of love and sympathy, 
and where the child is made an active inquirer in his work. 
In the remaining portion of this chapter it is our purpose 
to show the importance of these elements in the lives of 
men and women and to point out how they grow out of 
the conditions in the schoolroom which we have been 
discussing before. 

I. Initiative. One of the most important elements in 
the character of men and women is initiative, the habit 
of outlining their own plans and executing them without 
direction from others. In a government like our own, 
where every individual is a sovereign in name, it is very 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer 201 

important that he be such in fact. As conditions are, 
there is in most of us a surplus of unused energy due to 
lack of initiative. William James says: "The average 
man lives far within his limits and possesses powers of 
various sorts which he habitually fails to use." In the 
last analysis, the difference in men is largely a difference 
in initiative; one puts himself into his work; the other 
does not. There may be all the elements of character 
in the cook of Woodrow Wilson that there are in Wilson 
himself; one puts these elements into use, the other 
does not. One lives nearer his maximum than the other 
does. There are more geniuses in the world than we ever 
dream of. Many men could have fought the battles of 
Napoleon as well as he did if they had had Napoleon's 
initiative, if they had been able to throw themselves into 
the task with the energy of a Napoleon. The world is 
full of Caesars, Hannibals, Gladstones, and Lincolns. 
The only trouble is that they have never discovered 
themselves and the world will never know them as such. 
They were "born to blush unseen," but not "to waste 
their sweetness on the desert air," because the bud was 
never permitted to open into a full-grown blossom, and 
they had no sweetness to waste. But there was the bud 
just the same with all its possibilities. We could utter 
over every grave that crowds the cities of the dead, the 
world over, what the poet said of those who slept in the 
quiet English churchyard: 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid, 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; 

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 

There is no limit to our possibilities if we would but 
exercise the initiative to live up to our maximum. Most 
of us, however, live but meager lives, content to remain 



202 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

on the seashore, picking up here and there a few shells 
that the tide has chanced to wash our way, never dream- 
ing of the great ocean of possibilities which lies out before 
us and which would be ours if we but had the coiirage 
to leave the shore and push our bark out into it. 

As the story goes, an eaglet was hatched in the same 
nest with some chickens, and thought the barnyard 
fence was the limit of his world, until one day he caught 
sight of one of his kinsmen as he swooped down into the 
lower air and gave him a vision of the greater world in 
which he might live. With a scream he left his narrow 
confines, and, thereafter, lived the life that nature had 
intended for him. The teacher does her greatest work 
when she touches her pupil into a realization of the 
larger life that is open to him. She has but a narrow 
vision of her task if she becomes so absorbed in the daily 
routine of her work as to fail to arouse him to a realiza- 
tion of his boundless possibilities. The trouble with 
most of us is that we have not seen the vision ourselves; 
we are not alive to our opportunities. We see nothing 
more in our tasks than the daily routine, the hearing of 
lessons, the discipline, the reports, promotions, etc., and 
never realize that we have the most glorious work that 
God ever intrusted to mortal hands — the shaping of the 
immortal destinies of men and women. We have a 
work that the very angels would delight to do. God 
has put into our hands the mere possibilities, the hidden 
potentialities, the raw material of his most glorious 
creation, and it is our task to make the finished product 
what He would have it be. There is only one way to do 
this, and that is by making the child's environment con- 
ducive to self-activity. When the teacher has done this, 
she has done all she can do to aid in the formation of the 
all-important habit; when she does more than this, she 



I 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer 20 j 

renders impossible the very end she wishes to attain. 
The habit of initiative will not grow in the cold formalism 
of the average schoolroom where everything is planned 
by the teacher and the pupil has nothing to do but to 
obey her orders. If the pupil is to act independently 
when he leaves school, he must learn to act independently 
in school; for here, as elsewhere, he must learn to do 
by doing. 

2. Adaptability is another element that is indispensable 
to the success of the modem man. One of the chief 
requisites of the man of to-day is that he be able to adapt 
himself to the constantly changing conditions. Espe- 
cially in the business world is this true. New methods 
of business are constantly being introduced, conditions 
are changing, and the man who cannot adapt himself to 
these new conditions must step down and out. The 
reason we read of so many failures in business is that 
men are lacking in the power of meeting new condi- 
tions as they arise. Men who have stood the test for 
years under old conditions are constantly giving place 
to the man who is alert and wide awake to put himself 
in harmony with every phase of progress. New rail- 
roads are being built; freight rates are being changed; 
markets are being shifted, old ones being closed and new 
ones opened up; new methods of production are being 
introduced which cause a constant variation in prices; 
and in hundreds of ways conditions this year are different 
from what they were last. If a man does not adapt 
himself to them, he will stand no chance in competition 
with the man who does. This is no time for the stereo- 
typed method; it is the age of open-mindedness. The 
business man, or any other man who closes his eyes to 
changing conditions, is a misfit. This is especially well 
illustrated in one of the Pete Crowther stories that recently 



204 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

appeared in the Outlook. In the particular story we have 
in mind, the old-fashioned merchant complained to Pete 
that his business was fast going from him. His customers 
who had been trading with him for years were leaving 
him and going to the newcomers who had started a busi- 
ness just across the way. The old fellow had been 
regarded as a successful business man by the little com- 
mimity in which he lived and was chagrined that failure 
was staring him in the face. He knew that his failure 
was not due to a lack of confidence in his business integ- 
rity on the part of the people. He had always regarded 
his reputation for honesty as his chief est asset. He knew 
that his failure was not due to his inattention to his busi- 
ness, for he was never more attentive than at the present 
time. 

Pete, as a traveling salesman, had been visiting this 
place for a number of years and had acquired a great 
admiration for the owner as a man. But he had long 
before seen that he must change his methods or his trade 
would leave him. He realized that his trouble was that 
he had lived too much in the past, and was too much 
influenced by the idea that methods that succeeded once 
would succeed again. This merchant bought the same 
goods he did ten years ago; he bought from the same 
markets; he arranged his store in the same way ; he used 
the same equipment, the same method of displaying his 
goods, and the same method of advertising. The new- 
comers were up to date; they had caught the spirit of 
the new age; they shifted their markets with a variation 
in prices; each morning saw a new arrangement in the 
display windows; they were always having a special bar- 
gain to draw the people; and in every phase of their 
business, they were in line with the spirit of the age. 

As the story goes, Pete pointed out to the complaining 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer 205 

ing merchant the cause of his failure and, after much 
urging, induced him to adapt his methods to the needs 
of his business. When he had done this for a few months, 
he saw his business coming back to him; his old friends 
who passed him for the newcomers were glad to return, 
and at the end of the year, instead of being a failure, his 
business far exceeded his most sanguine expectations. 

So it is with every man; his business depends on his 
open-mindedness, his willingness to accept conditions as 
they are and adapt himself to them. The habit of 
open-mindedness. It needs the atmosphere of freedom, 
self-activity, and investigation. If the child is forced to 
do as the teacher directs without exercising his own 
individuality, his actions and modes of thought soon 
become fossilized, as it were, and the habit of versatility 
will never be developed. What we call old-fogyism is 
a result of a habit or attitude of thought acquired during 
the school period, and a great many people acquire the 
habit before they are aware of it. The old fogy is one 
who sees things just one way and believes his opinion 
worth more than that of all the world besides. When 
you convince him, he is of the same opinion still, because 
his nerve centers have formed the habit of discharging 
in a certain direction and it is impossible for them to 
discharge in any other way. This is true not only with 
reference to thought; it is true with reference to actions. 
The old fogy not only thinks in the same channel, but he 
acts in the same way, and this is fatal to the success of 
the man who must meet modem conditions. One of the 
most pathetic sights in the world is the man who is still 
existing, but belongs to another age — the man who lives 
in the past and is constantly referring to the conditions 
that "used to be." The only way to avoid such a state 
is by keeping our thoughts and actions constantly in 



2o6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

harmony with actual conditions and by cultivating at 
all times the habit of open-mindedness. 

It is very important that the teacher possess this habit 
of adaptability if she wishes her pupils to possess it. 
She should be open-minded and ready to change her 
methods with changing conditions. But, as a matter of 
fact, most teachers are fatally lacking in this important 
element; they are the greatest slaves in the world to 
conventionality. They continue to do things as others 
have done them, and seldom stop to inqmre the reason. 
They teach the same studies in about the same way as 
others before them have taught them. Few of us could 
give a reason for doing things as we do them ; few teachers 
know why they teach the studies they do and in the order 
they teach them. They do things day after day, just 
as they have been accustomed to doing them, until the 
spirit has fled from their work, and their pupils, instead 
of being self -active, alert, and independent as they should 
be, are nothing but dependent automata. This is 
true not only of the teacher in charge of the room; it 
is also true of the average superintendent. The fact 
that there is practically one system of organization for 
the schools the country over is abundant evidence of the 
school man's lack of adaptability. The fact that so many 
cling to old-time methods and the old-time course of 
study, when the reason for doing so has long since ceased 
to exist, shows that the average school man is as much 
a slave to conventionality as the teacher in the room. 
We realize that the school man cannot always do just as 
he likes, because the people will not follow his leadership; 
but the fact that the people will not follow him in adapt- 
ing his work to changing conditions shows that the schools 
have failed to develop in them this habit of adaptability. 

If versatility is such an important element in the success 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer 207 

of men and women, the school organization and course 
of study should be conducive to the growth of such a 
habit. If the school of to-day tends to make machines 
out of boys and girls instead of wide-awake, open-minded, 
progressive men and women, it is not the school the times 
need, no matter how serviceable it may have been in the 
past. It is not enough to know that it was the school 
in which our fathers were educated, or the school we 
attended; but we must brush aside all sentiment and 
demand that it satisfy present needs. 

TOO MUCH IMITATION 

In theory, we all agree that the work of our schools 
should satisfy present needs; that there is something 
wrong with the schools that tend to make lawyers out 
of the boys of an agricultural community, or farmers 
out of the boys in a mining district; but, in practice, we 
look around to see what the other fellow is doing. We 
censure the boy at the board for copying; yet we do the 
same thing in copying from our neighbor. If he has 
manual training in his schools, we want manual training, 
too; if he has domestic science, we want the same; and 
few of us stop to ask whether these things will satisfy 
the needs of our community or not. In civic affairs it 
is the same way. If a neighboring town has a public 
playground, we want one, too; if it has a public park, we 
must have one, it matters not what the cost. During 
the past quarter of a century the kindergarten craze 
has swept over the country like wildfire. The feeling 
is now a little more sane, but at one time the people 
were clamoring for the kindergarten at any cost. The 
sentiment seemed to be that anything would do, just so 
it was called a kindergarten, and the sins that have 
been committed in the name of the kindergarten are 



2o8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

enough to cause its founder to turn over in his grave. 
But, with all this excitement, very few people have caught 
the spirit of the Froebelian philosophy, and the average 
kindergarten is nothing but the old primary school with 
a few things added. 

So it is in almost every line of work: imitation is the 
method pursued. If we do not imitate others, we imitate 
ourselves, and this is equally fatal. Imitation some- 
times has a place in education; but it should not become 
so prominent a feature of the schools as to destroy the 
pupil's power of initiative and individuality. It is doubt- 
ful whether it should ever be resorted to as a conscious 
means. The young child is a natural imitator because 
he has not yet acquired the power of independent action. 
The instinct will take care of itself and needs no encour- 
agement. If it is not encouraged, it will do its work and 
tend to vanish at the proper time. The teacher should 
create such conditions for the child that he will gradually 
pass from the stage of imitation to independence of 
action. The work of the schools certainly should not 
be principally imitation, copying, and reproduction. 
Conditions should not be such that the children will be 
taught to speak like others, to write like others, and to 
reproduce the thoughts of others, for under such con- 
ditions it is impossible to develop independence of thought 
and action. If the schools are organized to produce 
imitators, the products of these schools will be mere 
machines — tools in the hands of others, offering an 
inviting field for the demagog who would use them for 
his own personal aggrandizement. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. The child's instincts as a guide in his education. 

2. The physical nature of the child. 

3. Making the child the center of gravity in the school. 



kJB 



Making the Pupil an Active Inquirer 



20Q 



4. Uniformity and individuality in the schools. 

5. Pestalozzi's place in the history of education. 

Further Readings 

McKeever, William A. Training the Boy. Macmillan. 

Nearing, Scott. The New Education. Row, Peterson & Co. 

Pearson, Francis B. The Vitalized School. Macmillan. 

Quick, R. H. Educational Reformers, pp. 290-383. D. Appleton 
8c Co. 

Wilson, H. B. and G. M. The Motivation of School Work. Hough- 
ton Mifflin Co. 



CHAPTER XIV 
PROPER HABITS OF WORK 

ONE of the greatest objections to the mechanical 
routine that obtains in the average school of to-day 
is that it renders the pupil unnatural. He assumes in 
the classroom a false attitude or bearing and tries to 
be what he is not. He has so long been dominated by 
false interest that it is hard for him to be himself. He 
wants to be like some one else, to do as some one else 
does, and to see things as some one else sees them. He 
does not read in his natural tone; he does not write in 
his own style; he does not discuss his lessons as though 
they were a part of him, and he does not see things with 
his own eyes, or hear them with his own ears. Having 
eyes, he sees not; having ears, he hears not; and having 
a mind, he does not understand. 

HABIT OF INVESTIGATION 

One of the results of arranging the child's work in 
harmony with his instincts will be that he will cease to 
imitate others, and be himself. His e^'-es will be taught 
to see, his ears to hear, his hands will be taught to handle 
real things, and his mind will be taught to solve real 
problems. He will no longer be required to see things 
through the eyes of others, or to understand them with 
the minds of others; but his own senses will be keen to 
everything around him. His senses will be cultivated 
by being brought into use and by being required to serve 
him. He will become acquainted with nature in all its 
various forms, and when he reads books, it will not be 
to learn, but to verify; it will be to compare his own 

2IO 



kfl 



Proper Habits of Work 211 

vision, his own hearing, and his own methods of thought 
with those of others. 

As conditions are now, the ignorance of the average 
man concerning the common things around him is amaz- 
ing. He does not know the songs or the habits of the 
birds, the names of the grasses and the flowers, or the 
conditions under which they grow; he does not under- 
stand the simple phenomena of nature or the action of 
natural forces that are taking place around him every 
day; he does not know how the clothes he wears are 
made, or how the raw materials from which they are 
made are prepared. In many cases he does not know 
how his food is prepared, or what forms are most nourish- 
ing and produce the best results in mental and physical 
vigor. He does not know the common diseases to which 
plants and animals are liable and he is helpless when it 
comes to treating them; he does not know the materials 
out of which the furniture of his home is made, which is 
best and cheapest; he does not understand how goods 
are brought to him from other lands, or the laws that 
have been made to facilitate their transportation. This 
appalling ignorance of the common things around them 
on the part of men and women is due to their having 
been taught to see with others' eyes, to hear with others' 
ears, and to think with others' minds. They have been 
taught that education begins and ends with books and 
they have not learned to observe for themselves. Socrates 
has been said to have been one of the wisest men who 
ever lived; yet he seldom went beyond the walls of 
Athens; but he saw, he heard, and he understood the 
things with which he came in contact. If we could but 
teach our pupils to use their senses, we should have 
but little trouble in bringing about their complete de- 
velopment; but we can never do this so long as we 



212 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

surround them with the artificial atmosphere of books. 
Without the habit of attentiorx, the pupil not only 
fails to accomplish an3^thing in his school work, but, 
when he comes out into the world of practical affairs, he 
will be completely at the mercy of his environment. 
He will be a prey to every idle fancy that may chance to 
come to him, and to every external influence which may 
invade his environment. He fails to acquire the habit of 
concentration, of directing his powers to one thing, and 
his interest through life will be continually flitting from 
one thing to another. Unless one has such a mastery 
of himself that he can exclude, for the moment, from his 
vision all but the one thing upon which his heart is fixed, 
he cannot hope for a very great measure of success in 
what he undertakes. 

EFFORT 

Another demoralizing effect of the artificiality of our 
school life is that it does not develop in the pupils the 
ability to put forth effort, and this is one of the first 
conditions of achievement. Intellectual laziness is a 
malady common to almost all men and women because 
they have not been trained to put forth effort. Having 
been confined to artificial tasks in which they have no 
interest, they have become incapable of doing hard work. 
It is an alarming condition that the great majority of 
men and women fail to make a success of their business. 
They may eke out a mere living, but the great majority 
of them do not succeed in the highest sense of the term. It 
is said that fully 90 per cent of men and women do not 
do what they started out to do, and one of the chief 
causes of these failures is that they are unwilling to do 
the hard work necessary to their success. The difference 
in men is largely a difference in their willingness to put 



I 



Proper Habits of Work 21 j 

forth effort. We ought to remember in our school work 
that we are training for the stem, practical world where 
there will be difficult problems to solve and where the 
man who has not learned to pull on a dead level, as it 
were, will have the odds terribly against him. It is by- 
overcoming that we learn to overcome. It is by over- 
coming the hard tasks in the schoolroom that we learn 
to overcome the hard problems on the outside; and if 
we have such conditions in the schools as to require us 
to solve no hard problems, we shall be helpless in the 
face of the hard knocks of the world. 

If the child's work in school is arranged in harmony 
with his natural instincts, he will acquire the habit of 
putting forth effort. It is as natural for the child to 
put forth effort as it is for the normal man and woman, 
but if the teacher does not mold instinct of the child 
into habit by making the conditions of his work con- 
ducive to effort, the child will never acquire the habit, 
and he will have to be driven to his tasks in school and 
he will have to be driven to them in the same way when 
he leaves school. It is only the few whose lives are not 
dwarfed by the artificiality of school conditions that 
retain and develop the instincts of childhood. 

JUDGMENT 

Another result of the normal growth and development 
of children is that they acquire the ability to judge the 
relative worth of things. It will do no good to talk 
about training the judgment unless we have conditions 
conducive to such training. The pupil can develop his 
judgment only by exercising it, and it is the business of 
the teacher to place about him such conditions that he 
will exercise it aright. His conclusions may be wrong, 
but wrong conclusions are better than no conclusions at 



214 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

all. The child's information ought to be accurate; but 
we are entirely too willing to sacrifice thought-power to 
accuracy of information. If we see the pupil about to 
arrive at a wrong conclusion, we grow impatient, take 
the work out of his hands, and lead him to the con- 
clusion we think is the correct one, as though the ultimate 
result were the thing of prime importance. A little more 
patience, a little better understanding of our tasks, would 
cause us to allow the child to work out his own con- 
clusions. If he goes wrong a time or two, or even a dozen 
times, it is better for him to do his own thinking than to 
have some one else do it for him. 

When the pupil comes out into the world, he is con- 
stantly required to estimate values, to decide between 
this fact and that. When he goes into a store to buy a 
piece of goods, he cannot afford to accept the salesman's 
judgment implicitly, it matters not how honest a sales- 
man he may be. He must think in every transaction 
he makes, or he soon becomes an "easy mark" for all 
who would use him for their benefit. In religion, there 
are some vital questions which others cannot settle for 
him, and upon which, perhaps, hangs his eternal destiny. 
In politics, he does not want to be a mere camp follower, 
passively accepting the demagog's directions with no 
opinion of his own. In his social affairs, he wants to 
stand for something, and not be a mere tool in the hands 
of others. In fact, there is no sphere of life in which 
individual thinking is not required of the man who would 
be efficient. 

However, according to our present methods, the teacher 
and the textbook are the final arbiters of things, and the 
pupil is given but little opportunity to think for himself. 
If he is not crushed by the system and made a weakling, 
it is because of the opportunity afforded him outside of 



Proper Habits of Work 



215 



school for independent thought. In geography, he must 
acquire the facts laid down in the textbook, and is rushed 
forward at such a terrific rate that he has no time to think. 
In arithmetic, the work is so arranged as to elicit the 
least possible thought. Most frequently all the problems 
on the page can be solved by the same rule, and the 
work is little more than a mechanical routine. In history, 
he must accept without question what the textbook says. 
In English, where there is the greatest possible oppor- 
tunity for individual thinking, the text editor has written 
out his notes in detail, and the pupil accepts blindly 
what he says. In Latin, there is no room for individual 
thought. The teacher stands over the pupil with her red 
pencil, ready to reprimand him if he digresses the least 
bit from the time-beaten paths. Before we accomplish 
in the school what we ought to, and inspire our pupils 
with that enthusiasm and self-confidence that is so 
necessary to successful work, we must change our methods 
so as to give the pupil a chance to think for himself. 



ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS 

Along with the development of his judgment, the 
pupil learns to organize his ideas. Mere information 
counts for nothing unless it is organized. The arrange- 
ment of facts according to their importance and natural 
sequence is necessary to a clear understanding of the 
subject under consideration. An isolated fact is worth 
nothing except as it helps to reinforce some truth or 
lesson. The fact that George Washington was the first 
president of the United States, regarded as an isolated 
fact, is of no consequence; but when the fact is taken 
in its relation to other facts, it is of extreme importance. 
If the fact that Columbus discovered America had no 
more significance than that a man discovered a continent, 

15 



2l6 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

it would not be worthy of our attention; but when we 
find out what continent he discovered and the vast chain 
of results that followed that discovery, it becomes one 
of the most important facts in the world's history. 

As a rule, the pupil feels that the purpose of his work 
in school is the accumulation of information and he pays 
but little attention to the arrangement of that information 
in a logical whole. He is such a slave to the textbook 
that he has lost sight of the subject. His aim is to mem- 
orize the thought, if not the words, of the textbook; 
hence all facts in the book stand out as on a level plain 
and are regarded as of equal importance. When he has 
completed a book, he has a good many facts, but these 
facts, not being arranged in their logical order, leave 
him in confusion. Few pupils are able to give an out- 
line of a textbook on history or science they have studied, 
and much less are they able to give an outline of the 
subject. They do not realize the relation of the text- 
book to the subject — that it may be a very large or a 
very small part of the subject. 

From the very first lesson, the pupil should be taught 
that he is going to study, not a textbook, but a subject, 
and that that subject has a certain logical arrangement 
which it is necessary for him to know. If the subject 
is arranged in its logical order, the mind can, at once, 
grasp it in aU its important details. For this reason 
every subject should begin and end with a general survey. 
It should begin with a general survey to give the pupil 
a conception of what he is going to study; it should end 
in the same way to give him an opportunity to assemble 
the facts he has learned and arrange them in one complete 
whole. In the process of his study he has been thinking 
of details, topics, sub-topics, etc., and he must be given 
an opportunity to see the relation of these to the subject 



Proper Habits of Work 217 

as a whole. Too often in the study of a masterpiece of 
literattire, for instance, we fail to grasp the selection as 
a whole, because we become lost in the details — the 
allusions, the words, the phrases, the detached statements. 
These things may be very interesting, but they are 
important to us, at the particular time, only as they 
give us a thorough grasp of the subject we are studying. 
Our interest in the colonnade, the beautiful windows, 
the dome, must not cause us to lose sight of the beauty 
of the building; our interest in the several trees must 
not make us lose sight of the grandeur of the forest; 
so our interest in the details of the subject must not cause 
us to lose sight of the fact that the details are important 
only as they help us to have a complete view of the sub- 
ject as a whole. 

We must get away from the erroneous idea that the 
end of school work is to give the pupil some information 
regarding the subjects studied. Information is but a 
means to the end; if the end is not attained, the time 
devoted to the acctmiulation of information is largely 
wasted. Our aim is to lead the pupil to acquire an 
accurate conception of the subjects studied, and we should 
not be satisfied with giving him a little information 
regarding these subjects. In fact, the pupil should be 
expected to acquire just enough information to complete 
the mental picture of the subject and no more; for more 
than this causes confusion. When the artist has brought 
out every feature of the subject, he adds nothing by 
keeping on with the use of his brush. He is likely to 
spoil what he has done, and make the features appear 
less rather than more distinct. The teacher should 
know when enough details have been presented to make 
the picture clear. If she does not know this, she is 
likely to do harm by giving too much time to details. 



2i8 Present Day Tendencies in Ediication 

Textbook writers too frequently put in facts because 
they feel that the pupil should know them, although 
such facts have no direct bearing on the subject studied. 
The teacher should be able to discern such facts and pass 
them over. 

The pupil should be thorough in what he goes over, but 
that does not mean that he is to know all the facts about 
the subject he is studying. To be thorough, he must 
know the subject in all its vital relations, and the signifi- 
cance of the term "vital" will depend upon the point 
of view of the student. From the point of view of the 
high-school student the tariff of 1897 may be passed over 
with a few words ; but from the standpoint of the special- 
ist it would require voltunes to dispose of it. The circu- 
lation of the blood is explained to the seventh-grader in a 
few pages, but the specialist reads volume after volume 
on it, and then leaves it with many mysteries unsolved. 
I Thoroughness is a relative term, and its meaning depends 

upon the point of view of the student. The history 
written for the seventh-grader may properly pass silently 
over facts that would be regarded as essential when 
estimated from the high-school pupil's point of view. 

There is another phase of the subject that we must 
not forget: both the seventh-grader and the specialist 
fail in so far as they fail to get a complete mental picture 
of the subject studied. The difference is that one leaves 
more for the imagination than does the other. With 
the seventh-grader the imagination plays an important 
part in filling in details; but the specialist, not being so 
easily satisfied with the work of the imagination, requires 
more real information. 

All subjects should begin with an outline, and the 
outline should be firmly fixed in the pupil's mind as 
an aid to thorough comprehension. The pupil should 



Proper Habits of Work ' 2ig 

be taught to arrange not only the entire subject in its 
logical order; but he should be taught to arrange the 
chapters, the lessons into topics and sub-topics. In 
each lesson there should be a central thought. This 
may not be a main topic as the subject is divided; but 
there should be a central theme in the lesson, and par- 
ticular attention should be given to the relation of that 
theme to the subject as a whole. The central theme 
should be kept constantly in mind while the pupil is 
studying subdivisions, and these subdivisions should be 
studied in their logical way. If he does not learn to 
study his subjects in a logical way, he gets very little 
good out of them. If he does not organize his ideas, 
they soon pass out of his mind. 

The question may be asked, can young pupils study 
in a logical way? To admit that they cannot do so is 
to admit that they cannot see things in their proper 
relation, and everyone who knows anything about the 
child's mind knows that this is not true. The child 
can see things in their proper relation and he does so 
every day. If he cannot do so in his school work, such 
work is not suited to him. If his reading lesson is com- 
posed of literature of the right sort, it will have sonie 
central thought. No selection of literature worthy of 
the child's attention is composed of thoughts of equal 
importance; they do not stand out on one level plain; 
hence the child must decide which are of greater impor- 
tance. This will necessitate his arranging them in their 
proper order. The child must discriminate between facts, 
ideas, suggestions, at every turn in his work and in his 
play, and even the casual observer will note with what 
facility he does so. He does not discriminate facts in 
his lessons, because he is not required to do so. The 
teacher is content with storing his mind with what she 



220 Present Day Tendencies in Edttcation 

calls useftil information, and gives him no incentive to 
go farther. If her standards required his arranging the 
facts learned in their logical order, there would be no 
question about his doing so. 

The organization of ideas is of paramount importance, 
not only to the student, but to the business and pro- 
fessional man, to the mechanic, and, indeed, to every 
man, it matters not what his business may be. Success 
in practical affairs is largely in proportion to our ability 
to organize our ideas. No real student studies books; 
his aim is the mastery, not of books, but of subjects. 

THE APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 

We have heard a great deal about liberal versus prac- 
tical education, and the friends of the old regime scorn 
the practical and have much to say about the liberal, as 
though there were a wide divergence between the two 
ideas. They say that the old education was liberal 
because it broadened man's vision and freed him from the 
thraldom of ignorance. But, as a matter of fact, while 
it may have freed him from what the followers of the 
old regime would call ignorance, it did not free him from 
real ignorance; for it is commonly recognized that the 
product of the old-time education was about the most 
ignorant person in the world of everything he ought to 
have known. He knew a little Latin, a little Greek, and 
some calculus, but when it came to those things around 
him, a knowledge of which would make him free indeed, 
he was totally ignorant. He was completely at the 
mercy of his environment because he did not understand 
it and know how to control it so as to make it serve him. 
Even to-day, when so much has been said and done to 
bring our educational system into harmony with actual 
conditions, the college graduate is frequently about the 



Proper Habits oj Work 221 

most ignorant person in the community; he is at the 
mercy of his environment, and, instead of being able to 
take hold of conditions and shape them so as to make 
them serve him, he must stand helpless until he has 
mastered those things which the school has failed to 
teach him. This is true not only of the graduate of the 
college; it is also true of the graduate of the professional 
school. The fact that the graduate of the law school or 
of the school of medicine has to go through a starving 
period is abundant evidence that these schools are not as 
practical as they should be. They may give practical 
information, but they do not give sufficient opportunity 
for the organization and application of that information. 
This leads us to another important truth that we have 
overlooked heretofore in our school work: The question 
of effectiveness or efficiency in education is not solved 
when we have arranged the right kind of a course of study. 
There seems to be an idea in the minds of some that when 
we have filled our course of study with practical subjects 
we have nothing else to do. Some seem to think that, 
when we have eliminated the formal studies and have 
substituted for them bookkeeping, domestic science, 
manual training, and agriculture, there is nothing to do 
but to stand by and see the miracle wrought. As a 
matter of fact, however, the right kind of a course of 
study is but the beginning of the solution of the problem. 
Not only must the course of study be composed of prac- 
tical subjects which meet the child's needs, but there 
must be opportunity in our school program for the other 
two steps in the educational process — the organization 
and the application of knowledge. The practical study 
may become as formal as the old-time cultural study, 
and will become so if the school program is not so arranged 
that the pupil will have time to organize^^what he has 



222 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

learned and make application of it to his everyday needs. 
If such opportunity for organization and application 
had been insisted on heretofore, there would not be the 
present wide divergence between the work of the school 
and the pupil's needs. There would have been no such 
idea as knowledge for knowledge's sake. 

It is true that some effort is being made to-day to give 
the pupil opportunity for the organization and applica- 
tion of his knowledge. The laboratory is supposed to 
be a place where the application is made of the knowledge 
acquired in the text; but its work has been and still is 
altogether too formal. The applications made are too 
artificial. The laboratory of the average school is not a 
place where a practical application is made of knowledge. 
In many places it is installed merely because the school 
authorities want to keep up with the times, and it is not 
organized on a broad enough basis to make a practical 
application of knowledge. It should be made, however, 
the center of school activities and organized on a large 
enough scale to make the practical test of all knowledge 
acquired in textbooks and from observation. 

We do not mean that the equipment for such a labora- 
tory must be purchased from a supply house. Some of it 
must be purchased that way; but such equipment is 
the least important. The playground is an important 
factor in testing information; but the best laboratory 
is the laboratory of the world, where the pupil comes in 
contact, not with artificial, man-made apparatus, and 
where there is a formal test made of knowledge, but with 
real conditions which the pupil must know when he 
leaves school and takes his place as an active citizen of 
the world. Conditions in the schools must be made 
such that there will not be the broad chasm between the 
school and practical life that there is to-day^ but the two 



Proper Habits of Work 



223 



must be brought together in such a way that one will 
shade off imperceptibly into the other. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Teaching children to study. 

2. The economy of time in education. 

3. Interest and attention in teaching. 

4. The training of the judgment. 

5. The motivation of school work. 

Further Readings 

Betts, G. H. The Recitation. Houghton MiflElin Co. 
Earhart, Lida B. Teaching Children to Study. Houghton MiflElin Co. 
Jones, O. M. Teaching Children to Study. Macmillan. 
McMurry, Frank. How to Study and Teaching How to Study, 

Macmillan. 
Strayer and Norsworthy. How to Teach, pp. 34-54, 55-72, 104-125, 

1 51-170, 220-234. Macmillan. 



CHAPTER XV 

EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENTS 

THERE is little doubt that during the past twenty- 
five years there has been a large increase in the 
efficiency of our educational system. The schools are 
doing better work and they are better adapted to the 
needs of the children. There is better organization, a 
better curriculum, and better methods of instruction. 
However, while we are reasonably sure that much prog- 
ress has been made, we have no means of knowing quanti- 
tatively the extent of such progress. We do not know 
how much more efficient our schools are in organization, 
in methods of instruction, or in the subject matter of 
their curricula. We have no means of knowing that the 
increase in the efficiency of the schools is proportionate 
to the increase in expenditure. We do not know how 
much more effective the school organization of to-day 
is than was that of the school of twenty-five years ago, 
nor do we know that this organization is better than some 
other that we might substitute for it. We do not know 
that the methods used are better than others that might 
be employed. In other words, we are working very much 
in the dark, and no doubt we should be very much 
surprised if we knew the facts in the case. Doubtless 
much of our pride and self-satisfaction would vanish 
if we knew just how far our educational program and 
procedure are below what they should be. We sometimes 
point with pride to this or that man or woman who has 
gone out from our schools, but we do not consider how 
much greater the success of such men and women would 

224 



Educational Measurements 22S 

have been had we employed better methods and a 
program of studies more adapted to their needs. It does 
not often occur to us that these men and women attained 
success in spite of what we did for them and not because 
of it, and we have nothing to say about the hundreds 
who have gone out from our schools unprepared to cope 
with the problems of the world. Almost any kind of a 
school will, in the course of several years, send out a few 
successful men and women. We should not, however, 
estimate the results of our work by the few, but by the 
many. 

Then it is not enough for us to be able to point in 
twenty-five years to a few successful men and women who 
have gone out from our schools. It is too expensive a 
business to wait for twenty-five years to find out whether 
our work is a failure or not. Twenty-five years is a 
long time, and in that time those who go out from the 
schools have opportunity to come in contact with many 
things that will counteract the bad work we may have 
done, and, on the other hand, they have many oppor- 
tunities to render void the good work we have done. 
One of the chief weaknesses of our educational system, 
and one that has permitted more downright fraud and 
covered up more incompetency than anything else, is 
the fact that we have not been able to evaluate our work 
at the time it is being done. Before our schools become 
the efficient institutions they should be and command 
the respect and confidence on the part of the public 
they should command, we must be able to evaluate 
our work from day to day. We must cease to talk in 
general terms as to the efficiency of the schools. When 
we say that we have an efficient school system, we must 
be able to give evidence to substantiate that fact. The 
measuring of school efficiency by personal opinion is one 



226 Present Day Tendencies in Edtication 

of the poorest methods of measurement. Those who are 
most competent to pass such an opinion are the last ones 
to do so, and they are making the greatest effort to 
devise some tests and standards whereby the work of the 
schools may be measured with some degree of accuracy 
and mathematical precision. 

We realize that there are some who think that the 
work of the schools cannot be measured from day to day 
or even from month to month. There are some who 
feel that there are some things in the schools that cannot 
be measured. The tone, the atmosphere, the spirit of 
the' school, it is said, are things that will not submit to 
the measuring rod, and, no doubt, this is true. But, on 
the other hand, it can be said that, while such things 
cannot themselves be measured, if they possess value 
they will result in something that can be measured. If 
the spirit of the school does not help the boy or girl to 
learn his arithmetic or grammar lesson more easily and 
more tho iroughly,t is not the right kind of a spirit. 
We hear a good deal of talk about the imconscious influ- 
ence of the teacher, and surely everyone is willing to 
acknowledge that such an influence is important. But 
such influence, if it is the right kind, will cause the child 
to make more rapid progress in his school work. Every 
I one of us knows that those teachers with the greatest 

amount of such influence were the ones who were most 
successful in cramming into our heads the facts and 
principles of arithmetic, geography, and the other studies. 
If we look back over ovir own teachers, do we not find 
that the best ones were those who brought about in us 
the greatest amount of measurable results? We do not 
think much of those teachers who, though seemingly rich 
in their imconscious influence, left us without anything 
substantial to show for it. 



Educational Measurements 22y 

SELF-COMPARISON 

Then there are those who question the advisability of 
applying tests and standards to the work of the schools 
because they feel that it is unfair to compare the work 
of one pupil with that of another. Pupils are not alike 
in any particular, and it is unfair to expect them to 
accomplish like results. Without doubt it would be 
tinfair to measure all pupils by the same measuring 
rod; however, it must be remembered that it is not the 
purpose of educational measiirements to compare pupil 
with pupil, or even school system with school system. 
The chief aim is to enable a school or school system to 
compare its own work at different periods. The aim is 
to discover differences in results and to determine the 
cause or causes of such differences. If the children of 
our schools are not as proficient in language or arithmetic 
as they were this time last year, we want to know the 
cause. If we are paying more per student hoiu: than 
we paid last year, we want to know the cause. Educa- 
tional measurement thus enables us to compare our own 
work at different periods and to determine what progress 
we are making. 

COMPARISON WITH OTHERS 

These measurements also possess great value in that 
they enable us to know how our own schools rank with 
other good schools of the country. We find out what 
other schools are paying for janitors, for teachers, for 
principals, and other supervisors; we know how the 
pupils of other schools rank in the several school branches, 
and we are able to determine how we stand in comparison 
with them. It is quite a revelation to a school system 
to discover that it is paying more per student hoiu: and 
attaining poorer results. Such a school is likely to 



228 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

search out the cause and do all in its power to remedy 
it, whereas if it did not find out these things it might 
go on in blissful ignorance and inefficiency. Thus, while 
it is unfair to compare individual with individual, much 
good comes from comparing group with group, and this 
is one of the aims of educational measurements. 

There is one thing that we must remember when con- 
sidering this question of measurements, and that is that 
education means change. The child who does not increase 
in knowledge, ideals, or good habits is not being educated, 
and we have acted on the presumption all the time that 
such things can be measured. Even those who are most 
opposed to scientific measurements in education will 
resort to the old-time examinations to determine whether 
the pupil has made satisfactory progress in his school 
work. Until recently no one thought of questioning the 
efficacy of such a standard of measurement. But now 
we are finding out that the old-time method of examina- 
tion and grading is wholly unreliable, and the movement 
toward the new standards and tests is an effort to sub- 
stitute scientific measurement for the old-time examina- 
tions and methods of grading. It is an effort to substitute 
acciu'acy for inaccuracy, scientific procedtire for unscien- 
tific procedure. 

In the past, momentous questions of school organiza- 
tion and school policy have been determined by the 
old-time examinations and methods of grading. These 
have been the sole basis for promotion, retardation, 
class honors, and admission to college. However, it has 
been proved that such a system of grading is wholly 
imreliable and that there is no standard of value by which 
it is governed. We make loo the basis; but loo does 
not mean the same to any two teachers. One teacher 
will range the grades between 60 and 100, another between 



Educational Measurements 22Q 

50 and 100, and another between 25 and 100. With one 
80 is an excellent grade; with another, it is poor. One 
teacher will put 75 per cent of her pupils above 90, while 
another will not put more than 10 per cent above 90. 
In fact, no two teachers have the same standards or 
follow the same practice in grading. 

OLD-TIME EXAMINATION UNRELIABLE 

In order to test the reliability of grades, 142 exact 
copies, including handwriting, errors, changes, neatness, 
etc., were made of two examination papers prepared by- 
two first-year English pupils, and these were sent to 142 
teachers of first-year English in some of the standard 
high schools of the country who were asked to grade 
them according to their own standards and practices. 
The grades on paper A, let us call it, ranged from 64 to 
98, and the great majority of the grades were between 
78 and 95. The grades on paper B ranged from 50 to 
98, and the majority of grades on it were between 75 
and 91. Thus we can see that if the destiny of a pupil 
depends upon his passing first-year English, he would 
better look well to the one who is to grade his paper. 
Five teachers gave paper A a failing grade and 137 a 
passing grade; 27 gave paper B a failing grade and 115 
a passing grade. Nineteen teachers marked paper A 
80 or below and 14 marked it 95 or above. 

Of course we expect teachers to assign different marks 
to English papers, because there is so much ground for 
individual judgment. But when we come to mathe- 
matics we do not expect the same variability. However, 
the facts show that teachers differ as widely in their marks 
in mathematics as in English. As evidence of this, 118 
exact copies of a paper in geometry were made and were 
graded by n8 teachers of mathematics. The grades on 



2^0 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

the paper ranged from 27 to 92. Of the grades, 61 were 
70 or above and 57 were below 70. This shows that a 
paper in geometry is no more likely to be graded cor- 
rectly than a paper in English. While there can be little 
ground for difference of opinion as to the correctness of 
the demonstration, there is a vast difference of opinion 
as to how that demonstration should be made and the 
steps in making it. 

The grades on a history paper graded by 70 teachers 
of history, in the same manner as the paper in English 
and geometry, were distributed about as widely as were 
the grades on these papers. Of the grades, 41 were 70 
or above and 29 were below 70; 12 of the grades were 
above 80 and 18 were below 60. Thus it can be seen 
that the grades usually assigned by teachers are wholly 
imreliable. A grade of 90 given by a teacher in Amarillo 
may be a grade of 60 for a teacher in Hereford. When a 
student comes to us from another school, we do not 
have the least idea as to the meaning of the grades he 
brings to us. A grade of 90 in mathematics in Amarillo 
High School may mean that the pupil is very good or 
very poor when estimated by the teacher of mathematics 
in Plainview or Lubbock. It all depends in each case 
upon the standards of value used. 

Then, granting that grades are fairly accurate and 
that teachers will give about the same grade on the 
same paper, we must still admit that such a system of 
evaluation tells us little or nothing as to the progress 
the pupil is making in his work. We mark him 90 in 
reading this year; we mark him the same 90 next year. 
This means that we think he has attained to within 90 
per cent of the standards we have set for him for the 
different grades, but it tells us nothing as to what these 
standards are. One teacher has one standard in mind 



Educational Measurements 231 

for a reading in the fifth grade; another has another stand- 
ard, and so on for the other grades. No two teachers have 
the same standards for either of these grades. We can 
tell nothing from such measurements, either as to the 
child's reading ability or as to his progress in reading. 
We should have a standard by which we can say that the 
second-grade child should make a mark of 35, for instance, 
the third-grade child a mark of 50, the fourth-grade child 
a mark of 75, and so on. If we had such a standard, we 
could tell what progress the child makes from year to 
year, and we could tell, too, when he has reached the 
desired degree of proficiency in reading. We could then 
let him drop reading as a school subject and devote his 
time to other subjects in which he was below the standard, 
or we could let him advance to a higher grade. As con- 
ditions are now, we make all the children in the room 
read, write, spell, and figure together regardless of the 
degree of proficiency they have attained. When a child 
has acquired the degree of proficiency required of a 
fifth-grade pupil in reading, writing, or arithmetic, there 
is no good reason why he should be required to study 
that subject with other fifth-graders. 

STANDARD TESTS 

Tests that approach a high degree of reliability have 
already been prepared for reading, spelling, grammar, 
composition, and a number of other school subjects. 
For example, Dr. Starch of the University of Wisconsin 
has prepared a spelling test by taking the second word 
on every even-numbered page of Webster's New Inter- 
national Dictionary, discarding 586 technical, scientific, 
and obsolete words and arranging the remaining 600 into 
six groups of 100 words each and of the same degree of 
difficulty in spelling. Thus the pupil who can spell all 

16 



232 Present Day Tendencies in Edtccation 

« 

of these words can spell loo per cent of the commoner 
words in the English language. By giving the tests to 
thousands of school children over the country, it has been 
found that first-grade pupils spell correctly lo words, 
second-grade pupils 30 words, third-graders 40 words, 
fourth-graders 51, fifth-graders 61, sixth-graders 71, 
seventh-graders 78, and eighth-graders 85. Thus we 
have a standard of attainment in spelling. If our chil- 
dren can come up to these standards, we may know that 
they spell well enough ; if they do not come up to these 
standards, we know that they are not spelling as well 
as they should, and if they go far beyond the standard, 
we may know that we are devoting more time to spelling 
than is necessary. We can see, too, how the individual 
pupil is progressing from grade to grade. This test 
gives a means of comparing his spelling ability now with 
that of a year ago and of knowing the progress he is 
making in spelling. In the common system, when we 
mark the pupil 90 this year and 90 again next year, we 
have no means of knowing either his ability in spelling 
or his progress from year to year. 

RELATIVE EMPHASIS TO BE PLACED ON SUBJECTS 

The scientific standard tests will also render valuable 
service to the schools in that they help us determine how 
much emphasis should be placed on the several subjects. 
Many schools are putting more emphasis on English 
grammar, for instance, than is necessary. The teacher, 
the principal, or the superintendent of such schools 
believes in the educational efficacy of EngHsh grammar 
and frequently emphasizes it to the neglect of other 
subjects. The best school system, other things being 
equal, is that which keeps a proper balance between the 
several subjects and emphasizes each subject no more 
than is necessary for practical purposes. Some schools 



Educational Measurements 2jj 

put undue emphasis on geography, some on handwriting, 
some on arithmetic, and others on music and drawing. 
That is, they put more time than can be afforded for 
these subjects when we consider the needs of the other 
subjects. 

The scientific measurements will also enable us to 
adjust the costs of the several subjects. When Latin 
costs five times as much per student hour as English or 
history, we may know there is something wrong. Either 
the cost of Latin should be reduced or the subject should 
be dropped from the curriculum. It is nonsense for us 
to retain a subject as a part of our curricultmi regardless 
of the cost and regardless of its educational value. 

THE RELATIVE WORTH OF SUBJECTS 

There is another phase of educational measurement 
that has received but little attention up to this time, and 
that is that of evaluating the several subjects. We say 
algebra has great educational value in that it cultivates 
certain powers needed in after-life, but in this judgment 
we are controlled almost wholly by tradition. We say 
algebra develops the power of concentration, of accuracy, 
of thoroughness, etc. ; but do we know scientifically that 
this is true? Some of our greatest educational thinkers 
tell us that there is no such thing as a general ability 
along these lines. Those of you who have carefully read 
Dr. Moore's What Is Education? were impressed with 
the weight of his arguments and there is in your minds, 
to put it mildly, a doubt as to the existence of a general 
ability along any line. To say the least, we do not 
absolutely know that we are offering the child in our 
schools the subjects that have for him the greatest 
educational value, nor do we know that we are offering 
the subjects we do offer in such a way as to make them 



2J4 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

count for most in the child's education. Of course, 
great advances must be made in educational psychology 
before the pathway along this line is as clear as it should 
be; however, we have more light than we are using. 
We follow blindly the path of tradition, using the same 
school organization, the same methods, and the same 
curriculum our fathers used, and we seem to have the 
utmost faith in their transforming power. Most of us 
need not be quite so sure of the efficacy of the old-time 
educational regime. A small degree of skepticism, to 
say the least, would be a good thing for us. It is such 
skepticism that is awakening a spirit of progress in the 
educational system of our country. It is causing our 
educational leaders to attempt to evaluate our educa- 
tional program and to adopt a system of organization, 
methods of instruction, and courses of study that will 
bring about the highest degree of social efficiency among 
our people. Of course the methods of evaluation offered 
up to this time are not scientifically perfect, but they have 
attained a high degree of perfection in several instances, 
and with the hearty cooperation of the school people of 
the coimtry in trying out such methods we may expect 
even greater things in the future. Surely no progressive 
student of educational problems can close his eyes to 
what is being done. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. Quantitative measurement of school work. 

2. The defects of the old-time system of grading with lOO as 
the basis. 

3. Some of the scientific standard tests in the common branches. 

4. Individual differences among children and their bearing on 
school work. 

5. The application of the standard tests in evaluating the work 
of the schools. 



Educational Measurements 235 

Further Readings 

Starch, George D. Educational Measurements. Macmillan. 
Strayer and Norsworthy. How to Teach, pp. 234-294. Macmillan, 
Strayer, George D. A Brief Course in the Teaching Process, pp. 

247-265. Macmillan. 
Thomdike, E. L. Principles of Teaching. A. G. Seller. 
The School Surveys of Newton, Massachusetts; Butte, Montana; 

Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas, and Cleveland, Ohio. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE LARGER SERVICE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL 

THE ascendancy of the American high school has 
been one of the marvelous expressions of the 
development of educational organization in recent times. 
Our faith in the larger service that it will render in the 
future will be strengthened by a brief review of its develop- 
ment within the past two decades. Within the past 
twenty years the number of pupils attending secondary 
schools has grown from 365,000 to 1,130,000 in the United 
States. This is an increase of 210 per cent, while our 
population during the same period increased only 47 
per cent. Twenty years ago there were only about 
2,500 public high schools; now there are approximately 
1 1 ,500. Not only have these schools been made accessible 
within the past decade to children living in urban districts, 
but high schools are being erected with marvelous rapidity 
in the remote rural sections of our country. 

The internal changes in the secondary schools have 
not been less remarkable than the increase in attendance. 
High-school buildings and equipment at the present far 
exceed the buildings and equipment of the better-class 
colleges of a generation ago. The course of study has 
been greatly extended and enriched within the last few 
years. New demands are constantly being made upon 
the secondary schools, and they have responded to these 
demands more adequately and effectively than any other 
type of educational agency. The public high schools 
within the last few years have attempted to perform 
services that we could have not conceived of ten 
years ago. 

The high school began its services with the aim of 

236 



The Larger Service of the High School 2jy 

developing the piirely intellectual powers of the pupils 
intrusted to its care. This function resulted in a stand- 
ing course of study with fixed limitation of subject matter, 
requiring limited equipment and teachers with a general- 
ized training. The new demands forced employment of 
teachers of specialized training and an enormous exten- 
sion of laboratory and library facilities. We have seen 
manual training and home economics incorporated in 
the course of study in the best high schools as the result 
of ever-changing demands of our social situation. None 
of us is justified in saying that the high school has reached 
the limit of its scope of social service. Whatever special 
task may be assigned in the future, we cannot fail to 
recognize the enlarging of its scope of service within the 
last decade. If we can use the history of high-school 
development in the past to help us prophesy the trend 
of high school education for the future, it may save us 
the loss of much social energy and better enable us to 
adjust our educational machinery to social demands. 
Mindful of this past history, we wish to suggest three 
possibilities for the enlargement of service of the public 
high schools of the future: 

1. What are the possibilities that the present high 
school will ultimately extend the number of years of 
instruction and the scope of study until it will take the 
rank of a junior college? 

2. What are the possibilities of advancement of home- 
credit work in connection with high-school instruction? 

3. What are the extension-service possibilities of the 
public high school? 

TREND OF HIGH-SCHOOL REORGANIZATION 

There seems to be a decided trend toward the estab- 
lishment of junior colleges. As yet these colleges have 



2j8 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

not been the outgrowth of secondary schools. Some of 
these schools started out as regular four-year colleges, 
but in the interest of efficiency and thoroughness their 
courses have largely been reduced to two years of college- 
grade work. In a few cases institutions have been es- 
tablished with no other intention than to develop high- 
grade junior colleges. 

There seems to be a decided trend at the present time 
in the direction of subdividing the secondary schools into 
two administrative units — at least this is the tendency 
in a number of our city school systems. We are coming 
more and more to feel that secondary education should 
begin with the twelfth year. The open question is as 
to where it shall end. The advocates of the junior high 
school would say at the end of the eighteenth year. 
They would contend that this plan should be developed 
into (i) a junior high school of three years, which would 
take the pupil through his fifteenth year; (2) a senior 
high school, also three years in length, extending from 
the fifteenth to the pupil's eighteenth year. The present 
trend of the public high school is toward extending its 
limits and toward reorganizing on a "six-and-six" plan.* 

The tendency to extend the limit upward to include 
the Freshman and Sophomore years of collegiate instruc- 
tion has not appeared above the surface, but it seems that 
we might ask with reasonable seriousness: What is the 
likelihood that the high school will develop such a tend- 
ency and is such a development desirable? Attention 
is directed to a few factors that have a bearing on the 
situation: (i) Recent years have witnessed a remarkable 
increase in the admission requirements in the professional 
schools and especially schools of medicine and law. Many 

1 See Calvin Olin Davis' discussion of this question in High School Education, 
PP- 75-78, by Charles H. Johnson and others. 



The Larger Service of the High School 2JQ 

of the better medical schools require one or two years of 
college training as a prerequisite to the first year's work. 
Some even require graduation from a reputable college 
for admission to the Freshman year of professional train- 
ing. This has created a demand for pre-technical or 
pre-professional courses. It has been assumed that the 
student would get these courses in standard colleges. 
But this assumption is open to serious question if this 
training is to be for only one or two years. The demands 
of the future will probably require the high school to 
consider demands resulting from gradually increased 
entrance requirements. (2) In the second place, en- 
trance requirements of all standard colleges are being 
steadily raised. The more important universities and 
colleges are concentrating their efforts upon research and 
professional training. In practically all the colleges and 
universities the Freshman and Sophomore classes are 
increasing numerically with great rapidity. It is exceed- 
ingly expensive to provide the laboratory facilities neces- 
sary to accommodate adequately large Freshman and 
Sophomore classes. The most important colleges and 
universities will gradually increase their entrance require- 
ments as a means of reducing the number of students in 
the beginning years of college work. This will mean 
that the responsibility of preparing students for senior- 
college and university work will be shifted to the high 
schools. The local social pressure will then exert itself 
as it has done in many similar instances to compel the 
high school to extend its course of study to meet the new 
standard requirements of our higher institutions of learn- 
ing. The colleges have already dropped their preparatory 
academic departments that were so long associated with 
them, and the entire trend of collegiate organization is 
distinctly upward. As the gap widens between the 



240 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

high school and the college the demand will increase for 
the high school to fill it with an adequate course of col- 
legiate grade. 

It is not contemplated, of course, that every high school 
will evolve into a junior college any more than that every 
junior high school will develop into a senior high school, 
but there is undoubtedly a well-developed sentiment that 
we should take educational opportunities to the people. 
A logical means of accomplishing this end will be the 
development of junior colleges in strategic positions in 
the city and elsewhere, easily accessible to the students 
from both the lu-ban and rural senior high schools. There 
are distinct advantages in this plan. Many people hesi- 
tate to send their children several hundred miles away 
to college at the age of sixteen or seventeen, as their 
habits of life have not become definitely determined. 
The expense, including railway fare and board, is an 
important factor in the problem of attending college 
away from home, especially for a series of years approxi- 
mating from four to seven years. It is obvious that all 
the reasons for the differentiated high school, supple- 
mented with the reasons here suggested, give validity to 
the junior-college idea. 

HOME CREDIT FOR HIGH-SCHOOL WORK 

However remote may appear the vertical tendency 
of the high school, the latitudinal tendency is a social 
phenomenon recognized by all. Subject after subject 
has been added to the high-school curriculum. We no 
longer justify the inclusion of a subject on disciplinary 
grounds, but we now seek justification on the basis of 
the subject's content value. The demand of the public 
has created social pressure to add this subject or that, 
until not only has the secondary school been compelled 



The Larger Service of the High School 241 

to recognize the elective system in the selection of sub- 
jects, but even differentiated courses have been provided. 
With this latter tendency has come the larger demand 
for the recognition of the social relation of the high school 
to community welfare. We wish to direct your attention 
to this tendency under two headings: (i) home credit 
for high-school work as the means of articulating the 
interests and activities of the home with the public 
school; (2) the extension-service possibilities of the public 
high school. 

The home-credit plan of correlating the interests and 
activities of the school and the home has possibilities 
beyond our present powers of comprehension. There 
has been a belief in the minds of school officials for many 
years that some method should be developed to unite 
the mutual interests of home and school. Various experi- 
ments have been tried in the past, but none of them seems 
to have accomplished the purpose in a satisfactory way. 
It appears that the home-credit plan now in operation in 
various places throughout the country holds out most 
hope for the accomplishment of this object. 

To the best knowledge of the authors, Superintendent 
L. R. Alderman of Oregon was the first to give credit 
for home-study work. His explanation of the way in 
which he came to try out this idea is related in an interest- 
ing way in a pamphlet called School Industrial Credit for 
Home Industrial Work. He says: 

The idea of giving school credit for home work first occurred to 
me nine years ago when I was a school principal. I had noticed 
that one of my rosiest-cheeked, most vigorous appearing girls spent 
much time on the streets after school. One day Mary's mother 
was pointed out to me. She was a pale, nervous little woman with 
several children. Knowing that the family was not very well to 
do, I felt myself burning with indignation at the circumstances that 
were drawing Mary away from interest in her home. I thought, 



242 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

"What is the use of my teaching that girl algebra and general 
history when what she most needs to be taught is that her mother 
is her best friend and needs her help?" 

At the algebra recitation the next day I announced that the 
lesson for the following day would consist of ten problems as usual, 
but that five would be in the book and five out of the book. The 
five out of the book would consist, for the girls, of helping cook 
supper, preparing breakfast, and putting a bedroom in order. 
When I asked for "hands up" on all the problems the following 
day, I noticed that Mary kept her hand raised after the others 
were down. "What is it?" I asked. "I worked five in advance," 
she replied with sparkling eyes. "I worked five ahead in the 
book besides the ten that you gave us." From that time Mary's 
interest in all school work was doubled. She was right up in the 
first rank. The rest of the year we regularly talked over the girls' 
home work. School public opinion encouraged the girls so that 
more and more reported on what they had done in housework and 
sewing, and felt proud of it. Best of all, our discussions brought 
the school and the home together. The year was successful for 
all of us. More parents visited the school and there was a concerted 
movement for the betterment of school conditions. 

The plan has been ampHfied and developed in many 
different ways in recent years. Some failures have 
resulted from defective outlines and unsatisfactory- 
explanations, while the most successful efforts in this 
direction seem to grow out of carefully outlined home 
projects. The Massachusetts plan has been well devel- 
oped and it is now in successful operation in many parts 
of that state. It is based entirely on the project system. 
While the nature of projects are somewhat subject to 
local conditions, there can be considerable uniformity 
in the project submitted for home-credit work. The 
Extension Division of the University of Illinois issued a 
bulletin in March, 1903, called Home Projects for School 
Agriculture. This bulletin carefully outlines twelve pro- 
jects as follows: (i) poultry raising, (2) keeping dairy 
cow, (3) raising a litter of pigs, (4) care of fruit trees. 



The Larger Service of the High School 243 

(5) tomato raising, (6) potato raising, (7) landscaping 
home grounds, (8) vegetable gardening, (9) growing 
alfalfa, (10) planting a catalpa crop, (11) growing a plot 
of com, and (12) some insect study. Each project is 
divided into five sections. Section i gives specific instruc- 
tions as to selection of stock, and a paper is required on 
reasons for selection and the history of the breed of stock 
chosen. Section 2 gives instruction concerning the care 
or cultivation. Section 3 directs attention to methods 
of keeping records. Section 4 directs attention to kinds 
of equipment and methods of its construction. Section 
5 gives a list of briefs and practical references for use in 
connection with the projects. All plans require frequent 
reports as to progress, time devoted to the project, and 
the results being obtained. 

The benefits of this type of instruction and correlation 
are incalculable. It not only insures the closest possible 
sympathy between home and school; it simply means 
the extending of the laboratories of the high school to 
the home and the field. It transforms the home com- 
munity into a vast laboratory in the interest of practical 
instruction. It is true, these projects cannot have the 
personal supervision of the teacher like laboratory experi- 
ments and field practice on the school farm, but what is 
lost in personal supervision is usually compensated for 
in the larger interest and, therefore, in the more faithful 
efforts resulting from the work being done under normal 
conditions. There is every reason to believe that we 
may expect the home-credit plan of high-school study 
to become practically universal within the course of a 
few years. With this accomplished, undoubtedly the 
high school will lay the foundation for its larger service 
in its work of extension, which we wish to discuss as an 
appropriate and proper function of high-school activity. 



244 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

THE SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF HIGH-SCHOOL EXTENSION 

While we have seen fit to discuss the home-project work 
as a separate possibility of the high school, in reality it 
is quite obvious that it is a form of extension teaching. 
In our own thinking, it occurs to us that home-credit 
work as indicated above is the connecting link between 
formal intermural instruction and extension proper. 

The activities of educational extension service have 
undergone rapid changes within the last three or four 
years. They have manifested themselves in the lyceum 
courses and Chautauqua movements, correspondence 
coiirses, debating leagues, farm institutes, and in numer- 
ous other forms. Many of the great industrial cor- 
porations, like the International Harvester Company, 
are doing very important extension work. In fact, the 
exploitation of every useful device is in an important 
sense extension work. Now, the high school in an 
informal way has done and is doing some of this work. 
But cannot the high school, through more formal efforts, 
do a great deal more without decreasing its efficiency or 
misdirecting its endeavors? 

We may safely assume that the state universities and 
colleges will be expected to render expert service to the 
people of the state through organizations of engineering, 
agriculture, and home economics. The only question 
that has not been definitely settled is that of the agents 
through which these institutions will carry this knowledge 
to the people. Those responsible for the administering 
of pubHc funds for the promoting of the cause of educa- 
tional extension realize the necessity of directing their 
endeavors through community institutions and agencies. 
It is hopeless in large states to expect a group of experts 
to reach any considerable nimiber of people through 
direct endeavors. The policy is already developing of 



The Larger Service of the High School 245 

using social institutional agencies as an immediate means 
of disseminating special types of information. It occurs 
to us that all of us must look more and more to the 
public high schools as one of the most effective agencies 
through which to extend a body of public information. 
To put the thought in concrete terms, an illustration 
will be given of the possibilities of cooperation between 
the agricultural college and a local high school. The 
instructor in agriculttire in charge of the department in 
a high school can greatly increase his service to the 
community by enlisting the help of the agricultural expert 
in the department of extension at the agricultiiral college. 
He could plan local farmers' institutes from time to time 
and invite expert assistants from the college. He could 
be influential in assisting at the county fair in formulat- 
ing and planning the county agricultural exhibit. All 
these suggestions as to the instructor in agriculture would 
apply with equal force to the teacher of home economics. 

No contention is made in this discussion that the high 
school should provide a corps of extramural teachers for 
community service. While that is not an impossible 
thing for the remote future, it is certainly not a possi- 
bility of the immediate future. It is recognized also 
that as a rule the high-school teaching force has little 
time for a large amount of constructive community effort. 
Nevertheless, it is believed that the quickest way to secure 
additional teachers to relieve this burden is for the present 
teaching force to render large service to the community. 

In many communities high-school teachers are doing 
extension work without recognizing it. They are teaching 
in the Sunday school, serving on important committees 
relating to civic improvements and community welfare, 
directing reading circles, and doing other such work in 
ways too numerous to mention. 



246 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

It is believed, however, that the extension service of 
the public school would gain in effectiveness by organiz- 
ing for more definite service in the interest of community 
betterment. High-school teachers are no longer unskilled 
men and women. The scope of the curriculum has made 
specialization necessary as a qualification for teaching 
in a high school. Perhaps the best teaching that is being 
done to-day is to be fotmd in the high schools. Should 
not the commimity conserve and use the talents of these 
men and women in every possible way? It seems desir- 
able that the larger and better organized high schools 
should have a committee on extension. This committee 
should be charged with the duty of studying the possible 
lines of service that the high school could follow in serving 
the complex needs of the community. The work of 
extending knowledge must be organized in some center. 
We cannot expect the community to know or to realize 
the possibilities of the high-school force as we know them, 
but with proper organization we would challenge the 
community to invite the high school to help in the solution 
of commimity problems. 

CONCLUSION 

The organization and policy of the high school of the 
future are already foreshadowed in the tendencies to which 
attention has been directed. There will be the junior high 
school and the senior high school and the junior college 
so articulated as to constitute one unit. The high school 
of the present is the most energized of our educational 
institutions. It has already expanded downward, and 
we prophesy that it is destined to expand upward, and 
in no less degree will its expansion be lateral. Our 
hope and prophecy for the high school of the future is 
that it will keep its organization sufficiently flexible to 



The Larger Service of the High School 247 

meet the ever-changing demands of new situations. We 
must not forget that, however valuable the material 
equipment, and however costly our high-school plants, 
the high school cannot save the cause of education 
because of its boasted equipment or palatial housing. 
Its aims must be definite. Its course of study must be 
adaptable. It must maintain its relation to higher 
education without at the same time sacrificing its respon- 
sibility to commimity needs. We must recognize the 
latent possibilities of the high schools. To assimie that 
the present type of secondary school represents the 
limits of its possibilities would be to shut our eyes to the 
most obvious fact in the educational situation of to-day. 

Topics for Report and Investigation 

1. A program of home work for boys. 

2. A program of home work for girls. 

3. An argument for a six-year high-school course. 

4. An argument against a six-year high-school course. 

5. The place of the junior college in our educational system. 

Further Readings 
Boynton, E. D. "A Six- Year High-School Course," Educational 

Review, XX, 5, 15-19. 
Cubberley, E. P. Changing Conceptions in Education. Houghton 

Mifflin Co. 
Dewey, John. Schools of To-morrow , chapter viii, "The Relation 

of the School to the Community." 
Eliot, Charles W. "Changes Needed in American Secondary 

Education," Occasional Papers, No. 2, General Education 

Board. 
Hall, G. S. "The High School as the People's College," Pedagogical 

Seminar, IX, 63. 
Harper, W. R. "The High School of the Future," School Review, 

XI, 1-3. 
Johnson, Charles H., and Others. High School Education. Scribner. 
Liddeke, F. "Extension of the High School Course," School 

Review, XII,635-647. 
Monroe, Paul. Principles of Secondary Education. Macmillan. 

17 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY— ITS PURPOSES AND 

POSSIBILITIES 

THE problems of maintaining educational standards, 
of increasing the virility and stimulating the efforts 
of the teaching force, of adjusting courses of study to 
the ever-changing social situations, and of determining 
the efficiency of the school plant and its equipment 
should be matters of constant concern to those engaged 
in administrative educational work. There should be 
unceasing attention given to standards and efficiency if 
progress in school work is to be maintained. Educational 
institutions maintained at public expense are continually 
having their activities scrutinized and their standards 
reviewed by the public. City councils and state legis- 
latures are concerned about the per capita cost of the 
physical plant for which the taxpayers are required to 
provide funds. There has been in recent years an increas- 
ing demand on the part of the public that school authori- 
ties be required to present data that give evidence of 
having been secured with a reasonable degree of accuracy. 
This is not a thing to be despised. It is one of the endless 
means of social control. It is perhaps the siirest means 
of preventing us from becoming indifferent to the main- 
tenance of standards that will insure reasonable results 
from the efforts and funds expended. 

These conditions have been largely responsible for 
educational surveys that have come into such general 
practice within the last few years. More and more the 
experience of private business has reflected itself in school 
activities. The expenditure of a half billion dollars on 

248 



Educational Survey — Its Purposes and Possibilities 249 

higher education in 600 colleges and universities attended 
by approximately 400,000 students is too large an enter- 
prise to leave to haphazard methods. The great city 
school systems, with hundreds of teachers and thousands 
of students and millions invested in school buildings and 
equipment, demand some measurement by which the 
public can determine the returns from such an outlay. 
If a system of measurement is desirable for a college and 
a city, it is even more important for a great system of 
schools of various types maintained by the state. The 
most gigantic educational enterprise that has been under- 
taken has been that of surveying the entire educational 
situation of an entire American commonwealth. As the 
educational storey idea is now in the ascendency, it 
seems well to consider in more detail some of the aspects 
of it as an educational problem. 

THE GENESIS OF THE SURVEY MOVEMENT 

Foreign educational surveys had a comparatively early 
beginning. For example, there was a Swiss survey 
made in 1799 by Minister Stapfer in accordance with a 
decree of the Helvetian Directory of May 2, 1798.^ In 
this connection a questionnaire was sent out to the 
different cantonal schools, and the information acquired 
was used in much the same way as is that of the modem 
survey. 

English surveys are reported by the same authority 
as having been made between 1861 and 1869. Several 
of these were based upon orders issued by the House of 
Commons, and the work was conducted by experts. 
Recent developments of the educational survey in this 
country have probably come directly from two sources: 
(i) The geological survey, soil survey, and certain social 
surveys have suggested the application of similar methods 



250 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

of collecting facts for information and guidance in edu- 
cational policies. (2) The increasing tendency toward 
supervision and inspection of instructional methods has 
suggested a more formal and systematic collection of 
data as a means of more definite knowledge of teaching 
standards. 

In recent years the scope of the survey has been greatly 
extended. Farm management, rural churches, and many 
special community problems, both in the city and in the 
country, have been the subjects of more or less important 
and accurate investigations through survey methods. 

THE PARTS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY 

The systematic survey comprehends the following well- 
defined features : 

1. Securing the facts. The survey is justified on the 
ground that its conclusions are based upon accurate 
information rather than upon mere conjectvire or opinion. 
A thorough investigation of the actual facts and con- 
ditions is the first step in the problem. These facts are 
supposed to be acquired by trained investigators acting 
as reporters of what is seen and heard, or through infor- 
mation contained in a carefully prepared questionnaire. 
The facts acquired should not only be reasonably acctirate, 
but a sufficient number of them should be available to 
justify the conclusions reached from them. 

2. Analysis and interpretation of facts. Once the data 
are assembled, the question arises as to their meaning. 
The second characteristic, therefore, is the analysis and 
interpretation of the data acquired. Much depends 
upon the correct analysis of the facts acquired and the 
interpretation given to them. For example, suppose that 



1 Mahoney, "Some Foreign Educational Svirveys," Bulletin No. 37 * 191S. United 
States Bureau of Education. 



Educational Survey — Its Purposes and Possibilities 251 

an abnormally large number of pupils in the elementary 
grades are overage. In other words, a number of pupils 
are one or two years above the normal age of the children 
ordinarily found in each of the primary grades. Do these 
facts indicate that this condition is due to overcrowded 
school conditions, or is it traceable to poor teaching? 

Let us take another example. Suppose that in the 
investigation of a certain school system it is found that 
an unusually large percentage of the students drop out 
of school between the time of entering the high school 
and the close of the Senior year. Is this condition due 
to a defective high-school system, poor teaching, economic 
conditions, or some other cause? Obviously it is as 
important to interpret the facts wisely as to analyze 
them correctly. The facts should be organized and 
proper correlations established if they are to be given a 
correct interpretation. This implies that the principle 
of interpretation involves an acquaintance with many 
correlating factors that may lie outside of the particular 
facts acquired by the investigator. 

3. Constructive recommendations. The object of the 
acctimulation and analysis of data and their intelligent 
interpretation is to promote a more efficient organiza- 
tion. The third step, therefore, is the formulation of 
constructive recommendations for the improvement of 
the system. Constructive recommendations depend upon 
two factors : (a) the accuracy and adequacy of the method 
and results of the previous steps; {h) familiarity with 
similar educational systems and the results obtained 
under different conditions. This may be regarded as a 
check upon the intei-pretation of the facts acquired. 

4. The formal presentation of the data. This requires 
considerable art and skill and a familiarity with statistical 
principles and methods. It is one thing to be certain of 



2^2 Present Day Tendencies in Education 

your conclusion. It is quite another thing to present 
it in such an attractive and convincing way as to carry 
conviction to those for whose benefit the siirvey has been 
made. 

5. Checkiug-up processes. Finally, if the best results 
are to follow from the efforts expended, some means 
must be devised to check up the educational system that 
has been surveyed, in order to determine to what extent 
the constructive recommendations have been accepted 
and followed. This has been a neglected element in 
most of the stirveys that have been made. It has too 
often been assumed that all that was necessary was to 
reveal the defects in the educational system and that it 
would naturally follow that they would be corrected. 
Unless the school authorities are in sympathy with the 
conclusions and convinced of the validity of the recom- 
mendations, it is likely that nothing will be done to 
put into effect the recommendations that are made. It 
should not be assimied, therefore, that a siuvey is complete 
when the report is made involving constructive recom- 
mendations. The wiser plan would be to provide that 
those responsible for the survey should be required to 
check up the system from time to time, during two or 
three years (the length of time depending upon the natvtre 
and extent of the survey), and that supplementary reports 
be presented concerning the progress of adjusting the 
system to the recommendations made. 

TYPES OF EDUCATIONAL SURVEYS 

It is diffictdt to classify surveys in a general way, but 
the educational surveys may be grouped as follows: 

I. Geographical surveys. Under this head we may 
group those general educational surveys that relate to 
an entire state, county, or township, and a school system 



Educational Survey — Its Purposes and Possibilities 253 

of a city. This class of siirveys may be illustrated by the 
stirveys made under the direction of the United States 
Commissioner of Education of the school system of 
Colorado^ and that of the state of Wyoming.^ A notable 
city survey is that of Portland, Oregon, made under the 
general direction of Professor Ellwood P. Cubberley. 
A typical coimty survey is that by M. L. Duggan of 
Rayboum County, Georgia. 

2. The specialized survey. Such surveys relate to 
special classes of institutions, or particular subjects, 
departments, or aspects of education. For example, the 
surveys of the state higher educational institutions of 
Iowa and of North Dakota made under the direction of 
the United States Commissioner of Education' are 
restricted to a special class of institutions and do not 
comprehend the entire educational system. Several 
important surveys of rural schools might come under 
this classification; for example, the survey of the rural 
schools of Travis County made by Mr. E. E. Davis of 
the University of Texas. 

Educational siurveys may also be classified with refer- 
ence to the agency through which the survey is conducted. 
Differentiated in this way, educational surveys may be 
classified as follows: (a) surveys conducted by a com- 
mittee of experts selected because of their special fitness; 
most of the notable surveys of states and cities and 
particular institutions have been made in this way; 
(6) self -surveys ; these are made by specially appointed 
representatives connected with the system that is to be 
surveyed. This type of survey has been strongly com- 
mended by Mr. William H. Allen* and seems to represent 

"^Bulletin No. j, 1917, Bureau of Education. 

2 Bulletin No. 2Q, 1916. 

^Bulletins Nos. 10 and 27, 1916, U. S. Department of Education. 

* Self-Surveys qf CdUges and Universities., 



254 Present Day Tendencies in EdticatioH 

the natural, constructive method of evaluating an educa- 
tional system. 

THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF THE SURVEY 

METHODS 

The appraisal of educational surveys is difficult to 
make. That many of them have not fulfilled all of the 
promises inherent in them is obvious to the student of 
educational problems. Disappointments have resulted 
in some cases from three very obvious defects: (i) Many 
of the surveys have been made by so-called survey experts 
who were brought together from fields of service more 
or less removed from the educational system that is to be 
examined. These experts are strangers to many eco- 
nomic, social, and traditional factors that will not yield 
to statistical measurement. The time is often too short 
for the surveying committee to consider thoroughly the 
historical development and the personal equations in a 
particular school situation. These factors have defeated 
the ends sought in several surveys that have been made. 
(2) In the second place, the survey has been latinched on 
such a comprehensive plan that it has been impossible 
in the time allotted for the survey to secvire all the neces- 
sary data upon which to base acciu"ate conclusions. (3) 
In the third place, as previously indicated, no "follow-up" 
plan is provided for checking up the school system to see 
if the proposed remedies and recommendations have 
been put into effect. 

It would appear that these difficulties may be partially 
overcome by self-surveys. The study of a school system 
by those who are both capable and intimately acquaint- 
ed with all the conditions that enter into it seems 
to offer a rather inviting opportimity. The advantage 
q£ the self-survey is that it need not be an abnormal 



Educational Survey — Its Purposes and Possibilities 255 

or unusual thing. It gives opportunity for continuous 
investigation of this or that aspect of the school activities 
and provides a means of checking up and evaluating 
every department and activity of it. The timeliness of 
the survey is an important factor in preventing academic 
atrophy, or too long protracted ineffective efforts. The 
self-siu^ey, however, is subject to the objection that 
those intimately associated with an institution are often 
blinded to defects that are very obvious to others. This 
defect can be partially remedied by inviting one or more 
educational experts from the outside to cooperate in the 
enterprise. It is not intended to underestimate the 
importance of the work that has been done by specially 
appointed surveying committees. The report of the 
investigating committee of the University of Kentucky 
can be heartily commended as a thoroughly constructive 
document and free from endless academic discussions of 
theoretical problems that are often found in survey 
literature. But the authorities of the University of 
Kentucky were not only fortunate in the personeln of 
the committee, but the committee had the advantage of 
dealing with a specific problem that yielded important 
facts upon which to base its conclusions. The same 
may be said with reference to the Portland survey and 
many county surveys that have been made. A study of 
the surveys of state educational systems has been rather 
disappointing. Some of the state surveys were inspired 
by wrong motives and, instead of resulting in construc- 
tive effort, they have often intensified local jealousies 
and led to distrust rather than to harmony and co- 
operation. There is also to be found in some of these 
surveys a large amount of academic discussion that has 
no relation to the facts developed. The impartial critic 
is almost compelled to conclude that the attempts made 



2^6 Present Day Tendencies in Edticaiion 

to survey an entire state system of public education have 
not justified the expenditure of money and energy expen- 
ded upon them. 

But an educational survey properly conducted has a 
rightful place in the educational policies of the country. 
There can be no efficient system of schools where the 
work of to-morrow is like that of to-day ; where the plans 
of this year are like those of last year; where the teacher 
is satisfied to use exactly the same methods and devices 
this term that were used last term. We have learned 
that buildings and machinery and teachers alone do not 
constitute an efficient school system. To these must 
be added efficient organization, teachers with adequate 
specialized training and experience, and students with 
proper habits of study, all of these constantly being 
applied and directed in the best possible way. 

It is not sufficient to believe that we possess all of these 
elements. The public demands that some means be 
provided by which the efficiency of the school system may 
be measured. New means are being devised by the aid 
of which this or that aspect of educational effort can be 
meastired. These are being placed in the hands of sur- 
veying committees, and increasing intelligence will enable 
us to use them more wisely. "The question is no longer 
shall we or shall we not have our school surveyed," says 
William H. Allen, "but how thoroughly, how helpfully, 
and how continuously it shall be surveyed." 



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